
cbiss BAisai 



PKHSKNTCU BY |^ ('V^ ,;(J^ 



^tbe '\Ilntver0ft? of Chicago 

FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFEI«I<ER 



The Sources of Alexander Campbell's 

Theology 



A Dissertation 

Submitted to the Faculties of the 

Graduate Schools of Arts, I^iterature, and 

Science, in candidacy for the degree of 

Doctor of Philosophy. 

(Department of Church History.) 



BY 



WINFRBD ERNEST GARRISON 



St. lyouis 

CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1900 



/ 



^be laniverait? of CbicaQO 

Founded by John D. Rockefeller. 



The Sources of Alexander 
Campbell's Theology 



A Dissertation 

Submitted to the Faculties of the 

Graduate Schools of Arts, Literature, and 

Science, in candidacy for the degree of 

Doctor of Philosophy. 

(Department of Church History.) 



BY 

WiNFRKD Ernest Garrison 



3?^ 






^ -1 






St. Louis 

CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1900 



^^>\ 






Copyrighted, 1900 

by 
W. E. GARRISON 



P. 

Publ. 

290 Dl 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction — The Historicai, Method 9 
I. Devei^opment of the ProbivEm op 

Unity 23 

II. Philosophic Ai, Basis 77 

III. TheoIvOGicai. Heritage 117 

IV. The Kingdom oe God 161 
V. Authority and Inspiration 185 

VI. Faith And Repentance 213 

VII. Baptism 229 
VIII. The HOI.Y Spirit in Conversion 

AND Regeneration 255 

tX. The Idea of God 285 



The Sources of Alexander Campbell's 
Theology 



INTRODUCTION 

THK HISTORICAI. METHOD 

He who undertakes to estimate the in- 
tellectual achievements of the nineteenth 
century and to generalize upon the his- 
tory of thought in this period, cannot 
fail to admit that the most fruitful and 
far-reaching general conception which 
this age has brought into prominence is 
the idea of development. Based upon a 
metaphysics which finds the essence of 
reality to consist, not in the changeless 
identity of an unknowable ''substance" 
in which all attributes inhere, but in the 
process by which functions are fulfilled, 
forms developed and new adaptations 
made to changing conditions, it quickly 
passed beyond the limits of speculative 
philosophy and found application in the 
fields of science, history, theology, and 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS THEOLOGY 

every study which seeks a knowledge of 
nature, man or God. If the very essence 
of reality lies in development, growth 
and adaptation, then knowledge of any 
portion of reality is to be sought in the 
study of its process of development; i. 
e., in its history. In its most general 
application, therefore, the idea of devel- 
opment gives rise to what may be called 
the historical method of studying all 
phenomena. 

According to the historical method, it 
is maintained that any object of knowl- 
edge, whether it be an organic forma- 
tion, an idea or an institution, is not 
known as the scientific observer seeks to 
know it until one knows the sources 
from which it sprang, the processes by 
which it came into being, and the 
changes which it has undergone in adap- 
tation to varying conditions. The effect 
of the application of this conception in 
the various fields of thought has been 
little short of revolutionary. The gen- 
eral principle of evolution (of which the 
Darwinian theory of the origin of species 

lO 



INTRODUCTION 

is a mere detail) is the most notable 
product of the idea of development, or 
the historical method, as applied to the 
understanding of the natural world. The 
scientific study of an organ of an animal 
or a plant, viewed from this standpoint, 
includes not only anatomy, which studies 
the organ statically as a mere complex 
of tissues, but morphology, which inves- 
tigates the origin and development of 
the organ in the species, and physiology, 
which inquires how it performs its func- 
tions at the present time. It is not pos- 
sible to attain a complete scientific 
knowledge of any organic formation, 
either plant or animal, without these 
three elements. 

Applied to the study of the phenom- 
ena which constitute the recognized do- 
main of history, the idea of development 
has produced what is sometimes called 
the "new historical method." It is the 
method which treats history as an organ- 
ism whose parts grew together and can 
not be understood separately; as a suc- 
cession of events causally related, the 

II 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

ultimate essence of wiiicli lies in their 
causal connection. History is no longer 
a /iea_p of facts, a collection of anecdotes 
whicii may be told in any order without 
substantial loss. It is not viewed as a 
mere 7^ow of facts, succeeding each other 
in a definite order but with only a chro- 
nological sequence, as the old annalists 
represented it. It is a chain of facts 
logically linked together, and the essen- 
tial reality of it all lies in the fact that 
it represents a continuous process of de- 
velopment. 

Applied to the study of political, so- 
cial and religious institutions and ideas, 
there has been produced what may be 
broadly termed the historical method. An 
idea or an institution is a growth. As a 
plant grows out of a seed, so an idea de- 
velopes from earlier ideas. Var}dng con- 
ditions of soil, moisture, heat and light 
influence the growth of the plant; vary- 
ing local and temporary needs, individual 
abilities and personal adaptations deter- 
mine the form of the idea. Chemical 
and physical analyses of the condition of 

12 



INTRODUCTION 

the plant at any single moment give only 
partial knowledge of it. To know its 
life, we must know how it springs from 
a seed of such a sort, is modified by cer- 
tain conditions and bears seed after its 
kind. Similarly, to understand a politi- 
cal institution, a social custom or a theo- 
logical idea, it is necessary to examine its 
origin in sources already known, in order 
to give it an organic connection with the 
general current of human history, and to 
study its development under the pressure 
of special needs and impulses. This is 
the historical method. 

If this method as heie described be ap- 
plied to the study of a system of theol- 
ogy, it will mean that for the time the 
critical process is laid aside and no attempt 
is made to determine whether or not the 
development which actually took place 
ever ought to have taken place, or to 
judge whether it meets the requirem^ent 
and embodies the best thought of a time 
other than that which gave rise to it. 
The study will inquire into the philo- 
sophical presuppositions of the system, 

13 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

its affinity with other systems preceding 
and contemporary, and the special con- 
ditions which influenced its leaders apart 
from the general current of thought 
which influenced all alike; but, in so far 
as this method is employed in its purity, 
it will not attempt to perform the func- 
tion of an apologetic or a polemic. It 
will orient the system in the general his- 
tory of Christian doctrine. It will be a 
study of sources and historical setting 
and development, but it will not profess 
to be either critical or constructive, al- 
though it is the necessary preparation for 
a consideration of that sort. 

It is the purpose of this book to pre- 
sent a study of Alexander Campbell's 
theology by the historical method. He 
was not a voice crying in the wilderness 
and having no connection with his age 
except to receive from its degeneracy an 
impulse toward reformation. Try as he 
would, he could not sweep aside all that 
men had thought during the past eight- 
een centuries, and lead a religious move- 
ment or formulate a system of Christian 

14 



INTRODUCTION 

doctrine as if a true word had not been 
spoken since the death of the Apostles. 
He was in close relation with the thought 
of his time, and it is that fact which 
gives him a definite place in the general 
development of Christian thought. There 
were, to be sure, local conditions which 
furnished the stimulus for his activity, 
but an examination of his work will 
show that it was not simply a reaction 
against these local abuses. 

Attention is called to the following 
points which must come up for consider- 
ation in the course of an historical and 
genetic study of Mr. Campbell's the- 
ology: 

First^ the problem of the reunion of 
Christendom, which was prominent in all 
of his religious thinking, was not an 
idea which was first conceived by him. 
Although unknown in the locality in 
which Mr. Campbell lived and worked, 
the idea of Christian union was one 
which had seldom been without an advo- 
cate from the time when the Protestant 

revolution broke the external unity of 

15 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

mediaeval Romanism. But the individ- 
ualism which was implicit in the Refor- 
mation of the sixteenth century must 
attain a fuller development and a more 
adequate statement before unity could be 
attained without a sacrifice of liberty. 
To understand the significance of Mr. 
Cambell's plea for union, therefore, in 
its relation to the general history of 
thought, it will be necessary to trace the 
development of the problem of Christian 
union and the condition of its solution, 
in the development of individualism 
through the thought of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. 

Second^ in working out his views of 
Christian doctrine on a basis as thor- 
oughly Biblical as possible, he held a 
definite theory of the nature of man and 
the method by which knowledge of both 
natural and spiritual things must enter 
his mind. It is evident that this inher- 
itance of psychology and theory of 
knowledge, which he received from the 
system of philosophy then current, could 

not fail to exercise an influence upon his 
i6 



INTRODUCTION 

formulation of Christian doctrine. For 
example, if he held (as he did) that man 
is so constituted that all his knowledge 
comes to him through sensation and re- 
flection, he could not hold that man is 
born with the idea of God or that knowl- 
edge of divine things is infused into him 
in some mysterious manner independent 
of all sensible means. At many other 
points there can be seen the influence of 
his philosophical presuppositions. It is 
necessary, therefore, in studying the 
sources and historical setting of the sys- 
tem of theology, to state briefly the char- 
acteristics of the philosophy then current 
in the circles in which Mr. Campbell 
moved — the philosophy of John Locke — 
and to show, in the consideration of the 
several doctrines, how and where the in- 
fluence of this philosophy made itself 
felt. 

Third^ as aflecting his view and use of 
the Bible, no conception which Mr. 
Campbell held was more determinative 
than his emphasis on the distinction be- 
tween the dispensations or covenants. It 
2 17 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

is important to note that this idea was 
revived rather than originated by him, 
for it appeared as the distinguishing feat- 
ure of a theological movement which, 
originated in Holland in the seventeenth 
century under the leadership of Cocceius 
and Witsius, was transplanted into Scot- 
land in the eighteenth, and was adopted, 
in some of its features, by the Seceder 
Presbyterian Church, of which Mr. 
Campbell was a member. We must note 
the influence of this and other theolog- 
ical systems upon the one which we have 
under consideration. 

Foiirth^ the special conditions which 
were presented by his religious training, 
his experiences in Glasgow among the 
Haldanes, the condition in which he 
found popular religion in America on his 
arrival, and his experiences in fellowship 
and controversy with Baptists and Pres- 
byterians, furnished the occa.sion for the 
development of the doctrines and in some 
degree determined the form in which 
they were cast. This material, which 

has already been presented in the form 

iS 



INTRODUCTION 

of memoirs and narrative history of the 
Disciples of Christ, need only be touched 
upon from time to time. 

Fifths a statement must be made, as 
complete as may be, of the substance of 
Mr. Campbell's final teaching upon the 
several doctrines to which he attributed 
most importance. This will represent 
the outcome of the operation of the pre- 
ceding influences. 

It is scarcely necessary to add as a fur- 
ther warning against misconception that, 
in speaking of the sources of Alexander 
Campbell's theology, there is no implica- 
tion of anything derogatory to his origi- 
nality, in so far as originality is a virtue. 
To say that he had sources is only to say 
that he was not isolated from the cur- 
rents of the world's thought. We would 
not consider him condemned, or even 
discredited, if it should appear that he 
was indebted for valuable suggestions to 
Sandeman, or Arminius, or Sabellius, or 
Arius. The utterly ludicrous ''offshoot- 
of-Sandemanianism" theory, which a 

hostile critic promulgated as a novelty 
19 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

something like lialf a century after it had 
been originally propounded and explod- 
ed, not only is an incomparably feeble 
piece of historical criticism, but mani- 
fests a complete failure to grasp the sig- 
nificance of sources in the development 
of doctrine. 

Certainly it can no longer be necessary 
to defend the proposition that Alexander 
Campbell was a theologian, and that 
therefore it is pertinent to make investi- 
gations into his theology. The old alle- 
gation, which used to be frequently heard, 
that Campbell's "Christian System" 
is the creed of the Disciples of Christ, 
has fallen into disuse. The book is 
merely a statement of the author's pri- 
vate theological views, which are inter- 
esting as being the opinions of one very 
influential man. The present work does 
not profess to deal with the official and 
authoritative theology of the Disciples of 
Christ, for they have no such authorita- 
tive system, but, as its title indicates, 
only with Alexander Campbell's 

Theology. 

20 



Chapter I 

The Development of the Problem 
of Unity 



DEVELOPMENT OP THE PROBIvEM OF 

UNITY 

I. The Probi^em — to Combine Sowdarity 

AND Indi\t:duai,ism : 

1. Both elements not developed until end of 

XVIIIth century. 

2. Solidarity embodied in mediaeval Ro- 

manism. 

3. Individualism implicit in the Reformation. 

II. Dogmatism oe First Reformers : 

1. Luther — Augsburg Confession. 

2. Calvin — the Latin Theology Protestantized. 

III. Break-up of Protestantism : 

1. First great revolt — Arminianism. 

2. Multiplication of sects. 

rv. Reaction Against Sectarian Spirit : 

1. Comprehension schemes — Leibnitz, Bos- 

suet, Spinola, Stillingfleet. 

2. Toleration — Baxter, Milton, Locke. 

3. Latitudinarianism — Cambridge Platonists. 

V. Individuawsm Fui,i,y DEVEiyOPED : 

1. Emotional and mystical — Pietism, Morav- 

ianism, Methodism. 

2. Intellectual— the "Enlightenment." 

VI. Nineteenth Century Probi^em — to Tran- 

scend Individuawsm. 

VII. Campbei,i,'s Solution of the Probi^em. 



THE DEVEI.OPMENT OF THE 
PROBIvEM OF UNITY. 

During the three centuries of Protest- 
antism prior to the beginning of the 
nineteenth, century there had been many 
attempts to restore the unity of a divided 
and still dividing church. Many men of 
large soul and wide spiritual vision had 
reacted against the narrow partisanism, 
the hateful controversies and the bigoted 
exclusiveness which marred the peace of 
Christendom. Some of the most influen- 
tial men in England and on the Conti- 
nent had consulted and planned for the 
restoration of unity among Christians — 
between Catholics and Protestants, be- 
tween IvUtherans and Reformed, between 
Anglicans and Dissenters, between Pres- 
byterians and Independents. But none 
of these attempts made more than the 
faintest and most fleeting impression on 
the religious world. Not only did they 

fail of the immediate accomplishment of 

23 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS THEOLOGY 

their purpose, but they failed even to in- 
augurate any important and lasting 
movement in that direction. 

At the beginning of the nineteenth 
century a young man without reputation, 
living in a remote district, far from the 
centers of the world's thought, made an 
attempt, in many respects not unlike 
those which had preceded, to bring 
about the union of Christians. The re- 
sult was not a spasmodic effort followed 
by relapse, but the beginning of an im- 
portant religious movement which has 
had for its chief mission the advocacy of 
Christian union. Whether or not the 
formation of another party in the relig- 
ious world is a legitimate method of 
advocating this reform, or one which is 
likely to advance the cause, is a question 
which does not call for discussion in this 
connection. The significant fact is that, 
whether effective or not, the attempt 
aroused enough interest to make it the 
starting-point of a movement which has 
continued and increased unto this day. 

The explanation of this phenomenon can 

24 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

be found only in the fact that the prob- 
lem of unity was not fully developed and 
ready for solution until about the time of 
Mr. Campbell's attempt. 

The most important problem which 
confronted the religious world at the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth century was 
this: How is it possible to reconcile the 
individual's liberty of conscience and in- 
tellect, with that degree of unity of the 
church in spirit and organization which 
is demanded by the will of Christ and 
by the practical requirement for efficiency 
in his service? Dispensing with the 
idea of an unlimited ecclesiastical mon- 
archy exercising absolute authority over 
its subjects in all matters of religious 
faith and observance, what power shall 
prevent the utter disintegration of Chris- 
tendom into as many warring parties as 
there are free individuals? 

Obviously the full significance of this 
tension between individual freedom and 
religious solidarity could not be appreci- 
ated until each of the conditions had 

been fully developed. It was not until 

25 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

the end of the eighteenth century that 
the conception of the free individual was 
completely developed. The philosophy 
of the Enlightenment was the most im- 
portant instrument in the development of 
this idea, and it became therefore the 
philosophical basis for those political 
movements at the close of the century 
which aimed to throw off all the re- 
straints of organized government and 
allow untrammeled liberty to the indi- 
vidual. Outbreaks like the French Rev- 
olution were necessary before govern- 
ments could know how uncompromising 
was the demand for popular liberty, 
which most modern governments have 
learned how to grant without precipitat- 
ing themselves into anarchy. Equally 
necessary was the chaotic condition into 
which the church fell as the result of the 
extreme development of individualism in 
the eighteenth century, that it might be 
known that any future unity of the 
church must be based upon a recognition 
of the freedom of the individual. Not 

until near the beginning of the nine- 

26 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

teenth century was there an adequate 
apprehension of these two essential con- 
ditions of the problem — solidarity and 
individualism. 

Mediaeval Romanism furnished a com- 
plete and consistent embodiment of the 
principle of solidarity. There were reb- 
els, to be sure, who renounced the au- 
thority of the church. There were from 
time to time agitators whose work im- 
plied a demand for the recognition of the 
individual. But that demand was con- 
sistently ignored, and the church re- 
mained a thorough-going exponent of 
the idea of unity through absolutism. 
The theological system which had been 
formulated by the great Augustine in the 
fifth century had given the theoretical 
basis for this development. Man is 
totally depraved by his inheritance of 
original sin. He can do nothing to 
effect his own salvation, except to allow 
himself to be the passive recipient of di- 
vine saving grace. This grace is com- 
mitted to the church for distribution and 

is bestowed upon men through the sacra- 

27 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

ments. All that man has to do is to put 
himself in communication with this sole 
channel of divine grace — the Holy Cath- 
olic Church — and be saved. The indi- 
vidual, as defined by modern thought, 
did not exist. The perfect unity which 
that church aimed at was not a unity of 
individuals, but unity through the sup- 
pression of individualism. In its period 
of Scholasticism, Romanism departed 
from the theology of Augustine at many 
points, so that a part of the work of the 
Reformers was to restore some neglected 
elements of Augustinianism. But Ro- 
manism never forgot that part of the 
doctrine of the great Bishop of Hippo 
which taught that man is but the incar- 
nation of an atom of original sin, who is 
indebted to the church for all the means 
of his salvation, and is therefore subject 
to the absolute authority of the church 
all the days of his life. 

The Protestant Reformation of the six- 
teenth century was, in the very essence 
of its method, a revolution. As a repu- 
diation of the absolute authority of the 

28 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

churcli, which had been the sole bond of 
unity in Christendom, it could justify 
itself only by an appeal to the right of 
revolution. The theory which is always 
implicit in revolution, furnishing at 
once its justification and its method of 
operation, is that the individuals who are 
governed are of more value than any 
fixed scheme of government. In politi- 
cal revolutions this normally takes the 
form of a declaration that the right to 
govern belongs to the people, but its 
most fundamental principle is a recogni- 
tion of the worth of individuals. Revo- 
lution always marks the point where the 
value of individuals begins to outweigh 
the value of any arrangement for secur- 
ing unity, either political or religious, 
at their expense. 

Two hypotheses are involved, by im- 
plication at least, in every popular revo- 
lutionary movement: First, it implies 
that no unifying and controlling power 
is legitimate which is essentially exter- 
nal to the individual; this immediately 

justifies the destructive work of repudi- 

29 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

ating the old despotic authority, thereby 
leaving the individual free and uncon- 
trolled. Second, since no revolution 
contemplates either the establishment of 
a nevv^ despotism or the perpetuation of 
anarchy, it implies that there is within 
the individual the possibility of a syn- 
thetic and constructive force sufficient 
for the control and unification of the 
social body. It is this second implica- 
tion which, though not apparent on the 
surface, is the real justification of popu- 
lar rebellion against unity through abso- 
lutism. It is safe to destroy the external 
bulwarks of the established order, only 
on the supposition that there are, or 
may be developed, within the individ- 
uals themselves, all the restraints and 
unifying forces needed to maintain the 
common life of the social body. 

The Renaissance in the fifteenth cen- 
tuty was the discovery of the individual 
through the media of painting, sculp- 
ture, popular literature and revived clas- 
sicism. After being for long centuries 

a mere unit in the mass, the individual 

30 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

first came to himself by feeling as an 
individual in the realm of art. The 
aesthetic sensibilities first felt the thrill 
of the new life. The Reformation in 
the sixteenth century was the process by 
which that newly discovered individual 
began to assert himself as such in the 
sphere of religion. But the problem of 
individualism had as yet only been felt 
and its meaning groped after. It had 
been implied as the basis of important 
movements, but it had not yet been 
thought through. Its two implications 
mentioned above had not yet come to 
light. 

When the Reformers proceeded upon 
their own responsibility as free men in 
revolting from Rome, they acted upon 
the principle that no external ecclesias- 
tical authority is necessary. But they 
were not prepared to maintain this as a 
general principle, for they created other 
ecclesiastical authorities in place of that 
which they had discarded. Still less 
did they comprehend an individualism 
which contained within itself the ele- 

31 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELLS THEOLOGY 

ments of order and unity. Therefore 
we are justified in saying that in the 
Reformation there was involved an im- 
plicit individiLalism. Because there was 
individualism, there could be a revolt 
against established ecclesiastical abso- 
lutism. Because it was only implicit, 
the revolution must be followed by a 
period of servitude under new masters 
(the dogmatism of the Reformation the- 
ologies), and that in turn by a period of 
anarchy and extreme disunion. 

Of the great Reformers of the first 
generation, Zwingli was the only one 
who is free from the charge of arrant 
dogmatism. Both Luther and Calvin 
were temperamentally dogmatic, and to 
that fact is due much of their success in 
welding their followers into compact 
and effective bodies for the necessary 
war against Romanism. The Saxon 
reformer w^as endowed by nature with 
an impetuous spirit which could meet 
fearlessly the assaults of his enemies, 
but could not with equanimity endure 
opposition from his friends. He would 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

not hold fellowship with those whose 
interpretations of Scripture differed from 
his own. There were three principles, 
by no means co-ordinate, which Luther 
made in different senses the basis of his 
movement. They were: the doctrine of 
justification by faith, the sole authority 
of Scripture, and the right of private 
judgment. To the first of these, which 
furnished the immediate occasion for the 
Reformation and the material content of 
its teaching, he clung consistently and 
tenaciously. The second can become 
effective for the liberation of men from 
ecclesiastical authority only in so far as 
it is accompanied by the third. This 
third he exercised to secure freedom 
from the control of the Roman hierar- 
chy and its traditions, but did not grant 
to others who sought freedom from the 
yoke of dogmatic lyUtheranism by an 
appeal to their own interpretation of 
Scripture. The classic illustration of 
this temperament is Luther's refusal to 
grant Christian fellowship to Zwingli, 

because the latter interpreted the. words 
3 33 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

**hoc est meum corpus" as signifying 
the spiritual presence of the I^ord's body 
in the bread of the communion. The 
Augsburg Confession of 1530 was the 
first authoritative declaration of Protes- 
tant belief upon a few great doctrines. 
Its adoption formally ushered in the age 
of Protestant dogmatism and it became 
as authoritative for Protestantism in 
Germany as the decrees of the Council 
of Trent were for Romanism. When 
religious peace was reached in the Em- 
pire in 1555, toleration was granted, 
under certain restrictions, to Catholics 
on the one hand and to adherents of 
the Augsburg Confession on the other. 
There was no toleration for dissenting 
Protestants. 

Calvin was by birth a Frenchman, by 
training a lawyer, and by nature a logi- 
cian. With that singular combination 
of clearness of vision and limited range 
of vision which is the peculiar heri- 
tage of his race, he saw no problem to 
which he could not see the solution, 
and was blind to every element of 

34 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

knowledge or experience whicli could 
not be incorporated harmoniously into 
his system of thought. This character- 
istic, united with a genius for system- 
atization which has seldom if ever been 
equaled, produced a well-nigh perfect 
dogmatist. But whereas Luther's the- 
ology was not rigidly systematized, and 
left room for a time for individual differ- 
ences on points not explicitly defined, 
Calvinism was from the first a com- 
pletely organized system, claiming au- 
thority, it is true, in the name of the 
Scriptures rather than in its own name, 
but perfectly intolerant of any doctrinal 
deviation and exercising over its adher- 
ents the same intellectual tyranny which 
had been the mark of the Roman 
Church. By so much as the burning 
of Servetus at Geneva by the order of 
Calvin was a more flagrant act of intol- 
erance than Luther's refusal to hold 
Christian fellowship with Zwingli, by so 
much was Calvinism the more rigidly 

dogmatic and the more inconsistent 

35 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS THEOLOGY 

with the principle of individualism to 
which it owed its existence. 

Henceforth the process of the enforce- 
ment of authority gradually lost its in- 
quisitorial character, by the abolition of 
the ecclesiasitical machinery by which 
submission to authority had been en- 
forced. Instead of forcing all men to 
accept the doctrinal formularies as laid 
down, Protestant dogmatism demanded 
the acceptance of them by all who 
sought entrance to the particular com- 
munion which had adopted them. 
Every man could accept them and come 
into the church, or reject them and stay 
out, at his option. This was true from 
the first of all non-established Protes- 
tant churches, but was arrived at by 
the established churches only through 
a gradual development which lasted 
through generations. The attainment 
of this stage marks the beginning of 
what may be called denominationalism 
in the modern sense. It is marked by 
a more or less reluctant acquiescence in 

the divided condition which Protestant- 

36 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

ism begins to assume, and it indicates 
that the first half of the implicit indi- 
vidualism of the Reformation is becom- 
ing explicit. The cessation of persecu- 
tion by Protestant churches which had 
it in their power to persecute, indicates a 
realization of the fact that the division 
of the church is preferable to a unity 
maintained by the exercise of external 
authority for the coercion of the indi- 
vidual. To be sure, each division long 
held that salvation was impossible out- 
side of itself, but it v/as something of 
a gain for individual liberty to allow a 
man to be comfortably damned in the 
free exercise of his own judgment, rather 
than to force salvation upon him by 
going into the highways and byways 
and compelling him to come in. 

Almost immediately upon the formu- 
lation of the great dogm.atic systems of 
Protestantism, began those movements 
which led to the break-up of Protes- 
tantism into a multitude of warring fac- 
tions. Passing by the disputes between 
the two great parties, Lutheran and Re- 

37 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

formed (Calvinistic) — disputes which 
were spared much of the bitterness 
which might have characterized them, 
owing to the happy circumstance of 
their geographical separateness — there 
soon began to arise dissensions within 
each party. I^utheranism, owing to the 
comparative looseness of its organiza- 
tion, was the first to suffer. And as the 
tendency to individual doctrinal varia- 
tions became more pronounced after the 
death of the great leader of the party, 
orthodox L<utheranism itself was vitiated 
by its attempt to brace itself against 
impending dissolution. In the Luther- 
anism of the seventeenth century there 
is seen a lack of the nobility of spirit, 
the firmness of grasp, the practical earn- 
estness which had characterized Luther, 
with all his dogmatism. The Latin 
theology was substantially restored, the 
fundamental doctrine of justification by 
faith obscured, and the right of private 
judgment virtually abrogated in favor of 

a narrow and legalistic interpretation of 

38 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

Scripture in accordance with traditional 
rules of exegesis. 

But the influences which were felt more 
largely in England and Scotland came 
from Calvinism and the systems which 
sprang up within and around and against 
it. The first great revolt against Cal- 
vinism as an authoritative and necessary 
compend of religious truth was the sys- 
tem of Arminianism. It was, to be sure, 
a system against a system, both fixed 
and carefully defined. Nevertheless, the 
rise of a combatant against the dominant 
Calvinism of the Reformed church, 
marks the real beginning of the exercise 
of the right of Protestant dissent. That 
men should dare to combat a system as 
rigid in its doctrines and as sulphurous 
in its maledictions upon all who rejected 
it as was Calvinism, was, without re- 
spect to the doctrinal merits of the two 
systems, a distinct advance in the his- 
tory of the growth of individualism. It 
was Arminianism, says Tulloch, which 
"revived the suppressed rational side of 
the original Protestant movement and 

39 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

for the first time organized it into a defi- 
nite power and assigned to it its due 
place both in theology and in the 
church." It represented, moreover, a 
moral, religious and emotional, as well 
as an intellectual, reaction, precipitating 
as it did a return to Bible study and a 
renewed declaration of allegiance to the 
Scriptures as the only source of religious 
authority. Both Luther and Calvin had 
accepted the main outlines of Augustin- 
ianism as a presupposition, and it was 
through this medium that they looked 
at and interpreted the Scriptures. The 
exigencies of the times, the fierce strug- 
gle against Romanism, had so urgently 
demanded the formation of a system that 
there was no time for a thoroughly Bib- 
lical reconstruction by the first genera- 
tion of Reformers. Arminianism was, 
with whatever success, an attempt at an 
unbiased Biblical reconstruction of Chris- 
tian doctrine. But Arminianism, as for- 
mulated in the Remonstrance of 1610, 
though historically the most important, 

was not the only theological protest 

40 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

against Calvinism. In no factious spirit 
and with no desire or expectation of pro- 
ducing schism in the Reformed Church, 
theologians, who found themselves un- 
able to acquiesce in the ethical and relig- 
ious implications of Calvinism, exercised 
the right of dissent and formulated other 
statements of the nature of God and man 
and the process of man's salvation. In 
no case were these new systems drawn 
up deliberately as the constitutions of 
new sects, and in some cases they suc- 
ceeded in remaining merely schools of 
thought within the church. Among 
such may be mentioned that modifica- 
tion of Calvinism which was held by 
several successive teachers of the school 
of Saumur, in France. These men, 
among whom the best known name is 
that of Amy rant, taught predestination 
conditioned on the divine foreknowledge 
of each individual's faith or unbelief. 
This teaching remained a phase of opin- 
ion in the Reformed Church in France 

just as infralapsarian and supralapsarian 

41 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

Calvinism were phases of opinion in the 
same church. 

Much more important than the school 
of Saumur is the so-called Federal or 
Covenant Theology, which sprang up 
about one generation after Arminianism. 
It was, like the latter, an embodiment 
of the same ethical protest against the 
rigors of Calvinism, its fierce conception 
of God and its failure to recognize the 
freedom of the human individual; and it 
was, too, an attempt to establish and 
put in operation a reasonable method of 
Biblical exegesis. So conspicuous was 
this latter characteristic that Cocceius, 
the leader of this school, has been called 
*'the father of modern exegesis." Of 
this theology more will be said in a sub- 
sequent chapter, but in this connection 
it is noteworthy as a manifestation of 
dissent from Calvinism. No religious 
party ever cr^^stallized about this system 
and it remained free to leaven the 
thought of the Dutch Reformed Church 
and to influence the development of doc- 
trine in Scotland, whither its influence 

42 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

was carried in the eighteenth century. 

The development as traced thus far 
exhibits an increasing divergence of the- 
ological opinion within the Reformed 
Church, but no fatal break in the exter- 
nal unity of the body. But at the same 
time movements were taking place which 
led to the separation of one after another 
sect. Most of these separating bodies 
represented distinct disruptive tenden- 
cies which had existed within Roman- 
ism before the Reformation, and now, 
feeling the loosening of the bond of 
authority, became, by the very law of 
their being, separatists from Protestant- 
ism as well as from Romanism. 

Foremost among these essentially sep- 
arative movements was that of the Ana- 
baptists, who were from the beginning 
the representatives of a most intense in- 
dividualism. Their most fundamental 
characteristic was not, as the name would 
indicate, opposition to infant baptism 
and the practice of re-baptizing those 
who came to them, but insistence on a 
* 'regenerate church membership. ' ' This 

43 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

phrase lent itself to various interpreta- 
tions, as it does to-day, according to the 
meaning that is attached to the term 
regeneration; but in any case the funda- 
mental conception is that the individ- 
ual's salvation depends solely upon his 
own personal relation with God, and not 
in any degree upon his association with 
any body of people who may be called 
the church. In protesting against the 
institutionalism which they conceived 
to be the failing of Protestantism even 
in the hands of the Reformers, the Ana- 
baptists entirely eliminated the idea of 
solidarit}^, the social side of Christianity, 
and developed an individualism which 
cheerfully acquiesced in the dissolution 
of Christendom into a multitude of sects, 
since they attached no value to unity. 
Protestantism, considered as the restora- 
tion of the long-obscured element of in- 
dividualism in religion, finds its most 
extreme expression in the position of 
the Anabaptists. That they do not rep- 
resent the highest type of Protestantism, 
is due not only to the fact that for a 

44 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

time they ran into various sorts of fanat- 
icism, but to the much more significant 
fact that Protestantism, as we interpret 
it, means not the exclusion of the idea 
of solidarity, but a proper distribution of 
emphasis in the valuation of the indi- 
vidual and the united body. 

The Schwenkfeldians, a sect founded 
by a contemporary and friend of Luther, 
illustrated this same tendency and that, 
too, without obscuring the main issue by 
laying special stress upon one ordinance. 
Schwenkfeld differed from the Anabap- 
tists in not insisting upon immersion, 
but he contended that the Reformers, 
like the Romanists, made too much of 
the external and objective means of grace 
which are associated with the church. 
He appealed to the consciousness of the 
individual in a tone and spirit highly 
suggestive of the plea of the Quakers for 
reliance upon the ''inner light." 

Socinianism, the rise of which was 
contemporary with the Protestant Refor- 
mation, not only involved an attack 

upon the most fundamental doctrines of 

45 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS THEOLOGY 

the faith, as held by both Romanists 
and Reformers, but exhibited a restless 
and lawless spirit, an impatience of all 
restraints which seriously threatened the 
efhciency of the Protestant propaganda. 
The burning of the Socinian Michael 
Servetus at Geneva, by Calvin, has 
already been cited as the crowning ex- 
hibition of Protestant intolerance. Yet 
it was not alone his heresy, as such, 
which Calvin took such extreme meas- 
ures to restrain. With all his theologic 
hatred of opposition, it is scarcely con- 
ceivable that Calvin would have burned 
James Arminius under similar circum- 
stances. Servetus as a Socinian repre- 
sented a disintegrating tendency in the 
ecclesiastico-political body. 

The dogmatic, autocratic and inconsist- 
ent unity which Calvin maintained, car- 
ried the Reformation through its period of 
life and death struggle with Romanism, 
and then disintegrating individualism, 
which had been in abeyance for a season, 
resumed its work. A state of war demands 

union, and even an army of rebels against 

46 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

constituted authority must place them- 
selves under a new authority till their 
war for liberty is over. So Protestant- 
ism won its first victory by the mainte- 
nance of dogmatic unity under the lead- 
ership of the great reformers. But often 
the military leader of a successful strug- 
gle for liberty, intoxicated by the tem- 
porary authority which he has exercised, 
seeks to make himself perpetual dictator, 
and a new rebellion is necessary to liber- 
ate the people from the yoke of the lib- 
erator. So Protestant dogmatism tried 
to maintain its authority after the need 
of unity under it had passed. The new 
rebellion which thus arose raged through 
the seventeenth century and continued 
with waning intensity through the 
eighteenth. 

It is not necessary here to enumerate 
the sects which sprang up under this 
impulse. Some of them subdivided so 
readily that they can scarcely be said 
to exhibit any regard for unity of any 
sort. In others, the inherited demand 

for unity was indicated by the constant 

47 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELLS THEOLOGY 

tendency to systematize; but it was the 
unity of those like-minded in all points 
of doctrine and not unity of all Chris- 
tians, or even all Protestants, in a single 
church. The idea was that there could 
be no ecclesiastical unity without uni- 
formity of opinions. Yet every man had 
the right to make his opinions, to for- 
mulate them into a S3'stem and to ex- 
clude from fellowship all those who 
refused to comply with them. It was 
this condition, — the multitude of bellig- 
erent Protestant sects, each trying to 
bring the world within its fold and yet 
setting up its own individual fence as 
the boundary of the fold, — which aided 
in bringing to light more clearly that 
inherent contradiction which we have 
mentioned as furnishing the problem of 
Protestantism from the day when Luther 
nailed his theses until the present hour. 
In general it may be said that from 
our standpoint it was the function of the 
seventeeth century, "that wretched cen- 
tury of strife," as Herder calls it, to de- 
velop this problem in its most conspicu- 

48 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

ous, because most disagreeable, form. 
Already, before the end of that century 
there had arisen in the more enlight- 
ened minds a loathing of the petty con- 
troversies about doctrine and polity be- 
tween the various- Protestant parties. 
Bossuet, in his work on The Variations 
of Protestantism^ had predicted that the 
inherent tendency to division must ulti- 
matety lead to its complete disintegra- 
tion and disappearance, and there 
seemed to be good ground for that be- 
lief. The more thoughtful Protestants 
became alarmed, and now there began a 
series of notable attempts to find some 
method by which this strife of religious 
parties could be reconciled. The vari- 
ous movements in this direction may be 
classed under the heads of comprehen- 
sion, toleration and latitudinarianism. 

Perhaps the earliest form taken by 
this disgust at the pettiness of theolog- 
ical controversy is seen in the conipre- 
hension schemes which were formulated 
and promulgated in considerable number 

both iu England and upon the continent. 
4 49 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

The best and broadest minds of that day 
turned readily in this direction. George 
Calixtus, who was a pioneer in the de- 
partment of irenics, suggested that all 
Christians ought to be able to unite in 
the restoration of primitive Christianity, 
by which he, like Newman, meant the 
New Testament plus the interpretations 
of the first five centuries. Leibnitz and 
Bossuet carried on a correspondence with 
a view to finding a possible reconcilia- 
tion between the Catholic and Protestant 
bodies and, when this was seen to be 
impracticable, Leibnitz turned his atten- 
tion to the formulation of terms of peace 
between the Lutheran and Reformed 
branches of Protestantism with equally 
little avail. The Spanish monk, Spinola, 
labored with the same intent, zealously 
but ineffectually. 

In England, Puritanism developed 
men whose breadth of charity and cath- 
olicity of sympathies present a curious 
and instructive contrast to our ordinary 
notions of Puritan austerity. Of these, 

one of the most notable was Stillingfleet, 

50 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

who, in his Ire7iicum^ which was first 
published in 1659 and reprinted in 1662, 
uttered these sentiments, which need 
only to be compared with any theolog- 
ical writing contemporary with them, in 
order to see how free he was from the 
spirit of belligerent sectarianism which 
confronted him in England at the time 
of the Restoration: "For the church 
to require more than Christ himself did, 
or make other conditions of her com- 
munion than our Saviour did of disci- 
pleship, is wholly unwarrantable. What 
possible reason can be assigned or given 
why such things should not be sufficient 
for the church which are sufficient for 
eternal salvation? And certainly these 
things are sufficient for that, which are 
laid down as necessary duties of Chris- 
tianity by our Lord and Saviour in his 
Word." The answer to this was the 
Act of Uniformity which went into 
effect in England in that same year, 
1662, by which the Church of England 
cut off and cast out its most vital ele- 
ment — Puritanism . 
51 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

Richard Baxter, wlio would be St. 
Richard if Puritanism canonized its 
saints, preached and pleaded for unity, 
early and late, in pulpit and pamphlet 
and prison. His treatise entitled T/ie 
True and Only Way of Concord of all 
the Christian Churches^ was only one 
of the many works which he wrote in 
similar vein. It was Baxter who gave 
currency to that slogan of true Chris- 
tian unity, the phrase which had already 
been coined by Rupertus Meldenius: 
"In essentials unity, in non-essentials 
liberty, in all things charity." Natur- 
ally, these sentiments could not find 
official acceptation in England under the 
Stuart despotism, for the Stuart theory 
of church and State was as absolutely 
repressive of the individual as mediaeval 
Romanism had been. There could be 
no room for the comprehension of vary- 
ing individual opinions within a state 
church with a Stuart at its head. The 
comprehension schemes therefore failed, 
and the next resort was a plea for toler- 
ation. 

=;2 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

The development of the idea of relig- 
ious toleration indicates a recognition 
of the place of individualism in religion, 
coupled with a scrupulous regard for the 
preservation of doctrinal uniformity 
within each sect. The established 
churches were not ready to take into 
themselves all manner of heterogeneous 
elements which v/ere contained in the 
various dissenting bodies, but they at 
least came gradually to the recognition 
of the fact that these dissenting bodies, 
as the expression of religious life of sin- 
cere men, had a right to a more or less 
free existence. 

Dogmatic and divided Protestantism 
infused with the spirit of toleration, is 
the last step in the development of indi- 
vidualism considered purely as a disrup- 
tive force. Through the activity of the 
dogmatic temper and the liberty of the 
individual to revolt, there had grown 
up many warring parties. The compre- 
hension schemes were an attempt to re- 
unite the parties on some simple basis of 
common faith. The advocates of toler- 

53 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

ation proposed to retain tlie parties but 
stop the strife. Carried out to its last 
limits, to the establishment of good- will 
and co-operation among the several par- 
ties, this would have fallen little short 
of unification. But the early advocates 
of toleration rather devoted their atten- 
tion to opposing persecution and govern- 
mental oppression of one sect in the 
interest of another. 

Chillingworth, with a spirit akin to 
that of Stillingfleet, pleaded for toleration 
under the early Stuarts in these words: 
*'Take away this persecuting, burning, 
cursing, damning of men for not sub- 
scribing to the words of men as the 
words of God; require of Christians only 
to believe Christ and to call no man 
master but Him only; let those leave 
claiming infallibility who have no title 
to it, and let them that in their words 
disclaim it, disclaim it likewise in their 
actions; take away tyranny and restore 
Christians to the first and full liberty of 
captivating their understanding to 

Scripture only, and it may well be 

54 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

hoped, by God's blessing, that universal 
liberty, thus moderated, may quickly 
reduce Christendom to truth and uni- 
ty." Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of 
Prophesying^ carries its purport in its 
title. John Milton, poet, statesman and 
theologian, was the fearless champion of 
a restoration of New Testament Chris- 
tianity and of complete religious tolera- 
tion; and John I^ocke, the philosopher, 
writing his Letters on Toleration from 
Utrecht, whither he had gone to escape 
the turmoils which immediately pre- 
ceded and followed the accession of 
James II., based his argument on the 
claim that ecclesiastical doctrines {e. g.^ 
the Thirty-nine Articles) were of human 
origin, that no man will be damned for 
disbelieving them, even if they are true, 
and that it is therefore ridiculous to per- 
secute those who deny them. As reason 
is the sole test of truth, so it should be 
the sole means of conversion. Under 
the leadership of such men as these, per- 
secution passed away, but the theolog- 
ical warfare continued with undiminished 

55 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

acrimony and on more equal terms. 
A third movement wliich may be co- 
ordinated with the comprehension and 
toleration movements as reactions 
against the bitterness of religious par- 
tisanship, is latitudinarianism^ as rep- 
resented by the group of men of the 
latter part of the seventeenth century, 
who came to be called the Cambridge 
Platonists. Platonism emphasizes the 
universal element — the Idea, as Plato 
called it — which exists in all individuals 
as their basis of reality. In like man- 
ner, these men of Cambridge maintained 
that the individual man possesses, in his 
own reason, a manifestation of the 
divine mind which puts his rational con- 
clusions beyond the reach of criticism 
from any other source. The voice of 
reason is, even more than the Bible, the 
voice of God. Each man must, there- 
fore, in the language of Archbishop Til- 
lotson, an English prelate and a Platon- 
ist, judge every doctrine "by its accord- 
ance with those ideas of the divine char- 
acter which are implanted in man by 
56 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

nature." In its practical workings, 
this led to a liberal emphasis on natural 
theology and the relegation to the back- 
ground of those doctrines of revealed 
religion which are drawn from the Bible 
and which, in their .various interpreta- 
tions, are made the ground of sectarian 
differences. Sacrificing as it did some 
vital elements of Christianity, by lack of 
emphasis if not by denial, the latitudin- 
arian movement unfitted itself for mak- 
ing the strongest possible protest against 
divisive dogmatism. 

In view of these movements to which 
allusion has been made, it may obviously 
be said that the seventeenth century saw 
developed many of the painful effects of 
Protestant individualism and some dis- 
tinct reactions in the direction either of 
restoring unity or of removing the most 
objectionable features of division. But 
it remained for the eighteenth century to 
furnish a fully developed philosophical 
conception of the individual and to ap- 
ply this in a thorough-going manner to 
the task of forming a consistent view of 

57 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

the world. There were two movements, 
begun in the seventeenth century and 
culminating in the eighteenth, which 
may be considered as developing the 
theory of individualism to the last de- 
gree and as attempting, along two oppo- 
site lines, to find in the individual so 
defined a basis for social and religious 
unity. The first was the series of 
mystical movements including Pietism, 
Moravianism and Wesleyanism; the sec- 
ond was the philosophy of the Enlight- 
enment in its application to the problems 
of society, government and religion. 

As a result of the persecutions and 
strifes of the seventeenth century, the 
church found itself at the beginning of 
the eighteenth at a low ebb of spiritual 
vitality. Too weary with its struggles 
of party against party to continue the 
fight with any spirit, too much perturbed 
by attacks from without upon the very 
foundations of religion to derive much 
satisfaction from disputing about details, 
forced by the development of constitu- 
tional liberty to grant a governmental 

58 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

toleration wliich was accompanied by no 
charity in the heart, too much exhausted 
to fight and too stubborn to make peace, 
the church sank from a condition of dis- 
graceful internecine warfare into a still 
more disgraceful lethargy. The crown- 
ing characteristic of the eighteenth cen- 
tury was a lack of enthusiasm. 

The most sincerely religious reaction 
against this state of affairs, which had 
been brought about by the divisive in- 
fluence of Protestant dogmatism, was 
seen in a general movement turning 
away from all dogmatism and substitu- 
ting for it a religion of pure feeling. 
Within the Lutheran communion there 
arose mystics like Arndt and Jacob 
Boehme, whose spirit was not unlike 
that of Tauler and Thomas a Kempis. In 
France the same motive animated Mad- 
ame Guyon and Fenelon, to whose Cath- 
olic adherents the name of Quietists was 
applied. Following in the train of these, 
there arose many mystical sects within 
both Romanism and Protestantism, their 

limits being geographical rather than 
59 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

dogmatic. They made little of church 
dogmas and insisted on the feeling of 
the individual as the sole criterion of 
the religious life. Many of them were 
degenerates in one way or another and 
soon ran into fanaticism. Not a few, 
in revolting against legalism and arti- 
ficial restraint, became antinomians and 
fell into gross immorality; but the op- 
probrium which attaches to these must 
by no means be transferred to the really 
great movements which were animated 
by the same fundamental principle, the 
appeal to the emotional consciousness of 
the individual as constituting the high- 
est law and the supreme revelation of 
God to man. 

The Quakers, under the leadership of 
George Fox, with their doctrine of the 
"inner light"; Pietism, which roused 
the Lutheran Church from its stupor and 
led in a great revival of vital religion 
and good works; Moravianism, which, 
under the wise guidance of Count Zin- 
zendorf, gave to the cause of foreign 

missions such an impulse as it had not 

60 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

received since the days of the apostles; 
Methodism, which arose in the Church 
of England and left that communion 
only when it showed itself unwilling 
longer to contain the fervid evangelism 
of Wesley and Whitefield; — all of these 
movements owed their origin and their 
strength to the reaction which set in 
against that dogmatic sectarianism which 
had divided the religious world, and they 
were in a large measure successful in de- 
veloping a side of religion which, before 
their time, had been too little empha- 
sized. They all alike disregarded (rather 
than denied) the established dogmas, 
which represented the inherited opposi- 
tion to individualism, and made their 
appeal to feeling, which is something 
essentially individualistic. Behind them 
all there lay the implicit assumption 
that feeling is not only the most individ- 
ual but the most universal element of 
human life, and they attempted there- 
fore to get down to the bed-rock of 
essential religion by effecting a synthesis 

6i 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

of the common elements of religious 
emotional experience. 

The Philosophy of the Enlightenment 
and its religious phase, Deism, gain a 
new significance when they are consid- 
ered as the opposite movement to that 
just mentioned as regards the methods 
which they employed, but identical with 
it in the end to be realized. Deism 
aimed to establish a universal Chris- 
tianity through the agency of the Phi- 
losophy of the Enlightenment. The 
warfare of religious parties, it said, is 
based upon differences of opinion in re- 
gard to mysteries whereof the mind of 
man can have no certain knowledge. 
Therefore let us cease to speak of these 
mysteries and dwell only upon those 
fundamental matters in regard to which 
v/e can have knowledge. Christianity 
is accordingly reduced to a religion of 
pure reason unassisted by revelation, 
natural religion takes the place of re- 
vealed religion, and all elements are 
excluded which are not common to all 

religious systems. Thus the essential 

62 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

and true element in Christianity is 
reached by an appeal to the consensus 
of the purely intellectual judgment of 
men, and the dogmas and alleged his- 
torical revelations are at best adventi- 
tious and doubtful and must be elimi- 
nated from reasonable religion. As 
Pietism, Wesleyanism, etc., had aimed 
at unity upon a common emotional ele- 
ment, so the Enlightenment aimed at 
unity through the universal reason of 
mankind. 

But the philosophical basis upon 
which the Enlightenment attempted to 
found its religion of reason was singu- 
larly inadequate for that purpose. Its 
theory of knowledge was sensationalism; 
i. e., that the raw material for all our 
knowledge enters the mind in the form 
of simple ideas through the avenue of 
the senses. The development of this 
philosophy from the standpoint of relig- 
ion is a familiar story. It was, wher- 
ever it was logically followed out, the 
temporary destruction of all religion. 

Aiming at a reduction of Christianity to 

63 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

its essentials through a purely intellec- 
tual process, it eliminated the mysteri- 
ous element and ended by eliminating 
relio:ion. 

In England, the movement was not 
carried to its logical conclusion. There 
Deism, through the accompanying study 
of nature and through the corresponding 
use of the physico-theological argument 
for the existence of God, kept a firm 
grip on the conception of God as a per- 
sonal creative intelligence. But in 
France the more logical development 
was followed, leading through panthe- 
ism (seen even as early as Toland in 
England), to hylozoism, and then by 
the final plunge into sheer materialism 
and atheism. The demand for a com- 
pletely clear and distinct view of the 
world and the determination to refuse to 
consider anything as true in nature or 
religion which was not clear and dis- 
tinct, led, not to a reduction of Chris- 
tianity to its essentials, which could 

then be made the basis for a united 
64 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

cliurcli, but to the destruction of all 
Christianity and of all religion. 

The Knlightenment was par excel- 
lence the philosophy of individualism. 
Disastrous as were its immediate results 
in the Deism of England and the natural- 
ism of France, it served the purpose of 
bringing to consciousness, as had never 
been done before, the fact of the tre- 
mendous significance of the individual 
in every sphere of life. In its practical 
applications it took the form of revolt 
against organizations and institutions. 
It would not tolerate the church because 
the church brought down traditions from 
the past and tried to impose them upon 
the individual of the present. It fur- 
nished the animating thought of the 
French Revolution and of the succeed- 
ing revolutionary movements which oc- 
curred in the last decade of the eight- 
eenth century and the first decade of the 
nineteenth. It was productive of a dis- 
integrated and atomic condition of soci- 
ety. It therefore prepared the way for 

a reconstruction and furnished the com- 

5 65 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

plete development of tlie problem of 
unity. 

The problem of Protestantism, the 
contradiction between the disintegrating 
tendency of its individualism and the 
unity which is required for effectiveness 
and for the preservation of its very ex- 
istence, has now come clearly to light. 
Through the long development which 
we have traced, the individual has been 
brought to light out of the darkness of 
mediseval solidarity and has developed 
into an irrepressible factor of all life 
and an essential element in every living 
organization. Simultaneous with this 
process, has developed the series of at- 
tempts to bring this young giant under 
laws and make him subject to the re- 
strictions of organization. The attempts 
have not been completely successful. 
This young giant, the modern Individ- 
ual, stands forth in all his might, free, 
uncontrolled, and his power in large 
measure wasted for lack of effective or- 
ganization. It becomes the problem of 

the nineteenth century to effect a syn- 

66 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

thesis between these two apparently con- 
tradictory principles, — to preserve the 
freedom of the individual untrammeled 
by useless machinery and unoppressed 
by musty traditions inherited from an 
outlived past; and at the same time to 
bring this individual into such working 
relations with his fellows as to make 
him most efficient. 

The task of philosophy in the nine- 
teenth century may be described in the 
most general terms as an attempt to 
transcend the individualism which was 
developed by the eighteenth; t. e.^ to use 
it, to control it, to pass beyond it to a 
unity which shall embody but shall not 
crush it. 

The problem of the religious world at 
the opening of the nineteenth century 
was a similar one. Protestant individ- 
ualism had been fully developed on the 
side of division and separation. That 
this could not be endured as a perma- 
nent condition was evidenced by the 
many unsuccessful attempts to restore 

unity. The conditions of the problem 

67 



ALEXAXDEE CAMPBELLS THEOLOGY 

and the need of a solution have now 
been ' brought clearly to light. The 
need of the hour was for the discovery 
of a principle of synthesis by which, 
without restricting the liberty of any 
man, a practical and effective union of 
religious forces might be obtained. The 
problem was to transcend religious indi- 
^T.duali5m by finding a basis for religious 
solidarit}'. 

The whole histor}^ of Protestantism 
had been a continual demonstration of 
the impossibility of uniting on the basis 
of a complete theolog}', even a profess- 
edly Biblical theology. The exercise of 
the right of private judgment is a guar- 
antee that there will always be many 
differences of opinion as to what the 
Bibld teaches upon certain points of 
doctrine. The attempt to reduce Chris- 
tianity to its simplest and purest form 
by emphasis upon the feeling of the in- 
dividual as the criterion of religion, had 
quickened and enthused the church but 
had contributed little to the solution of 

the problem of unity. Equally unsuc- 

68 



TEE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

cessful, and far more disastrous, had been 
the opposite attempt to get at the essen- 
tials of Christianity by a process of pure 
reason, based on a theory of knowledge 
the foundation of which was the sense 
perception of the individual. The sig- 
nificance of Alexander Campbell's con- 
tribution to the question of Christian 
union is that he took the matter up just 
at this point and proposed another prin- 
ciple of union. The unity of the church 
is to be based, not upon a complete sys- 
tem of Biblical or dogmatic theology, 
nor upon anything which is to be found 
within the individual himself; but upon 
the authority of Christ and the terms 
which he has laid down as the condi- 
tions of salvation. 

Mr. Campbell frequently spoke of his 
movement as an attempt to secure union 
"upon the Bible," but it was evident 
from the whole course of his thouorht 
that this did not mean union upon his 
interpretation of the teaching of the 
Bible on every point of Christian doc- 
trine. The latter would have been sim- 

69 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL S THEOLOGY 

ply a reaffirmation of the old dictum 
that "the Bible and the Bible alone is 
the religion of Protestants." It was 
rather Mr. Campbell's idea that the Bible 
is to be taken as the authority for deter- 
mining what is essential in Christianity. 
But the whole Bible is not taken up 
with depicting original and essential 
Christianity. Therefore the real basis 
of unity is not the entire Biblical teach- 
ing upon all points, about many of 
which there would be differences of in- 
terpretation, but the practice of the 
early church under the guidance of the 
apostles, as representing the authority 
of Christ. The question to be answered 
is, What did the apostles, taught by 
Christ, consider the essentials of a 
church? 

This distinction between union on the 
Bible, in the sense of union on all the 
doctrines which each individual con- 
ceives to be taught in the Bible, and 
union on the Bible, in the sense of union 
on the Biblical statements regarding the 

essentials of Christianity, is an impor- 

70 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

tant one to bear in mind, as it helps to 
define the position which Mr. Camp- 
bell's theology occupied in his general 
scheme of thought. His theology was 
his interpretation of the teaching of 
Scripture on a great many points, and it 
shows the influence of some contem- 
porary systems of theology and philoso- 
phy. But he did not make his theology 
his basis for union. For example, he 
conceived that faith, repentance and 
baptism v/ere essentials of Christianity, 
and were therefore included in the basis 
of union. But his interpretation of the 
nature of faith, the manner in which the 
Holy Spirit operates in conversion, and 
the design of baptism in the scheme of 
redemption, were parts of his theology 
which he taught as truths but did not 
erect into tests of fellowship. 

While his whole movement was a re- 
volt against the results of eighteenth 
century individualism, as manifested in 
the condition of Christendom as divided 
into innumerable sects, Mr. Campbell 

revolted also no less against its method, 

71 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

namely, the self-dependence of tlie indi- 
vidual in matters of religion. He con- 
curred with the general movement of the 
eighteenth century in desiring a reduc- 
tion of Christianity to its essential ele- 
ments, but he differed from it in assert- 
ing that Christianity could never be 
reduced to its essential elements through 
the exercise of the unaided human rea- 
son, or through dependence upon the 
emotions of man. There must be nec- 
essarily a return to authority for the 
establishment of the essential basis of 
religion. The unity, therefore, comes 
not from within, but from without. 
Given the individual as defined accord- 
ing to lyocke's philosophy, and there 
can be within him no universal element 
to serve as a basis of unity or as a means 
of attaining such a basis. 

Stated in his own terms then, Mr. 
Campbell's movement would be defined 
as an attempt to unite Christendom by a 
restoration of the essential elements of 
primitive Christianity as defined by the 

Scriptures. He was strongly of the 

72 



THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 

opinion that nobody before bad ever 
seriously attempted such a restoration on 
such a basis. All previous sects and dis- 
senting bodies had been built on creeds 
and confessions with only a nominal, or, 
if real, a short-lived, return to the 
authority of Scripture. He recognized 
the fact, it is true, that there had been 
a few scattered individuals, through the 
two centuries which preceded his work, 
who had grasped this idea, but there had 
never yet been any serious attempt to 
apply the principle to the solution of 
the problem. "Not until within the 
present generation," says Mr. Campbell, 
"did any sect or party in Christendom 
unite and build upon the Bible alone. 
Since that time the first effort knov/n to 
us, to abandon the whole controversy 
about creeds and reformations and to re- 
store primitive Christianity, or to build 
alone upon the apostles and prophets, 
Jesus Christ himself the chief corner 
stone, has been made." Attempts had 
been made, to be sure, to deduce from 

the Scriptures' complete systems of the- 

73 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS THEOLOGY 

ology, and to make these the bases of 
successive reformations of the church. 
But his own movement differed from 
these in seeking for the authoritatively 
given conditions of salvation and mak- 
ing these alone, as the essentials of 
Christianity, the basis for the unity of 
the Church. There may be differences 
of theory about the facts of the Gospel, 
but the facts themselves are sure. 
There may be differences of interpre- 
tation in regard to many doctrines 
taught in the Bible, but, when all preju- 
dices and preconceived opinions have 
been set aside, there is little room for 
differences in regard to the few simple 
commands, obedience to which was the 
only condition of entrance to the church 
in the days of the apostles. 

Stated in a word, his method of effect- 
ing the reconciliation between the liber- 
ty of the individual and the unity of the 
whole body, was a return to authority 
for essentials and the admission of indi- 
vidual differences in non-essentials. 

74 



Chapter II 
The Philosophical Basis 



THE PHIlvOSOPHICAI, BASIS. 

I. Descartes axd Locke : 

1. Descartes — clearness and distinctness as 

criterion of truth; doctrine of innate ideas, 

2. l/ocke — no innate ideas; turns philosophy 

from metaphysics to theory of knowledge. 

II. IvOCKE's Theory of Knowi^edge — Sensa- 

TIONAXISM : 

1. Ideas come only through sensation and 

reflection. 

2. Simple and complex ideas. 

3. Primary qualities represent an objective 

reality like the impression ; secondary 
do not. 

4. Substance is unknowable, since only quali- 

ties make impressions. 

5. Law of causation. 

III. DeveIvOpment and Appwcatiox of Sex- 

SATIOXAIvISM : 

1. In metaphysics, Berkeley's idealism ; in 

theory of knowledge, Hume's agnosti- 
cism ; reaction, Scottish philosophj-. 

2. Natural science : mechanical \iew of nature. 

3. Religion : Deism. 

4. Ethics : hedonism and utilitarianism. 

IV. Campbeli.'s Rei<ation to the Lockian 

Phii^osophy. 

76 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

The period of philosophy out of which 
Alexander Campbell's thought sprang 
may be denominated as the second pe- 
riod of modern philosophy. Descartes 
had struck the note of philosophical in- 
dividualism which was at once the ex- 
pression of the^ Protestant principle and 
the dominant feature of modern philoso- 
phy from Descartes to Kant. When, at 
the beginning of his Meditations^ Des- 
cartes announced his intention to cut 
loose from all received and established 
beliefs and, starting from a doubt as 
nearly universal as possible, to establish 
everything over again for himself, or, 
failing in this, to reject it, he gave ex- 
pression to this vital essence of Protest- 
antism and modern philosophy. "Clear- 
ness and distinctness" was the criterion 
of truth which he proposed. What is 

clear and distinct to me I will accept as 

77 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

truth, and no authority can force me to 
admit anything which does not so ac- 
credit itself. But fearing that this com- 
plete individualism might destroy the 
claim of religious faith to universal val- 
idity, Descartes maintained that there 
are certain Z7inate ideas which all men 
possess in common. These form the 
bond of unity between individuals which, 
as defined by him, have nothing else to 
hold them together. 

It was this sort of an isolated individ- 
ual, resolved that his world of knowl- 
edge should stand or fall according to 
the power or impotence of his own un- 
aided faculties, in whom lyocke tried to 
find the basis for relations between men. 
But since much that Locke called "met- 
aphysical rubbish'' had justified itself by 
appealing to Descartes's "innate ideas," 
Locke resolved to sweep these away and 
go to the last extreme of individualism 
by adding pure empiricism to the crite- 
rion of "clearness and distinctness." 

From the time of Locke, philosophy 

became introspective. It not only re- 

78 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

jected everything which could not be 
made clear and distinct to the individual 
mind, but it turned its attention to the 
consideration of this individual mind as 
a knowing organ. I^ocke's starting 
point was his discovery, which seems to 
have come to him like a rising sun, that, 
before questions of metaphysics, princi- 
ples of morality or revealed religion 
could be rightly investigated, it would 
be necessary to discuss the nature and 
limitations of human knowledge. It was 
to this task that he set himself in his 
chief work, and it was this which struck 
the key-note for the philosophy of the 
following century. The dominant prob- 
lems of that philosophy are, "How does 
knowledge arise?" "What is its possible 
extent?" and "What are its necessary 
limitations?" 

The theory of knowledge which was 
developed in answer to these questions 
determined the metaphysics, ethics and 
philosophy of religion for the period. 
Not infrequently does a poet of keen in- 
sight express the leading thought of the 

79 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

contemporary philosophy, and Alexander 
Pope summed up this tendency of eight- 
eenth century thought very accurately in 
the couplet: 

" Know then thyself; presume not God to scan. 
The proper study of mankind is man." 

Only by the study of man can the ex- 
tent and validity of his knowing proc- 
esses be determined and the means 
discovered by which knowledge can de- 
fend itself against the attacks of skepti- 
cism. As a matter of fact, the study of 
man's knowing processes by Locke and 
his followers did not succeed in proving 
the validity of knowledge or in warding 
off the assaults of skepticism. Its failure 
to do this characterizes it as a destructive 
period, but, as destructive, it was also 
preparatory. For in showing the inade- 
quacy of the old conception of the indi- 
vidual and his relations to the world, it 
opened the way for a higher conception 
which would admit the possibility of the 
completer synthesis for which these 

thinkers sought in vain. 

80 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

In consideration of the immense im- 
portance of the thought of Locke in 
connection with the theology which we 
are discussing, it will be necessary to 
give a brief survey of the chief features 
of his philosophy. 

In the preface to his Essay on the Hu- 
man Understandings Locke gives an 
account of the circumstances which led 
him to the consideration of the problems 
which he there discusses. In consider- 
ing, with a party of friends, the standard 
and sanctions of morality, he found him- 
self brought to a stand by his inadequate 
apprehension of the power of the human 
intellect to know the truth. He there- 
fore turned to the study of the mind as 
an instrument of knowledge. The prac- 
tical impulse which led to this discussion 
must be kept in mind as indicating one 
characteristic of Locke's thought, name- 
ly, its practical character and the imme- 
diacy of its application to questions of 
morals and religion. 

The most conspicuous and familiar 

feature of Locke's theory of knowledge, 
6 8i 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

is his doctrine of the source of ideas. All 
knowledge comes from sensation and re- 
flection. There are no ideas innate in 
the human mind, not even the ideas of 
God, or the law of cause and effect, or 
the axioms of mathematics. Things ex- 
ist external to us; man has a capacity 
for receiving impressions and a faculty 
of combining and comparing these im- 
pressions, and he has nothing more. 
All knowledge comes from the reception 
of images of these external objects upon 
the blank tablet of the mind. The 
standard of truth is therefore entirely 
external. We know objects if the ideas 
of them which we receive through sen- 
sation correspond to the external reality 
which is the cause of the impression. 
The impressions which we receive, just 
in the form in which we receive them, 
give us simple ideas in which there is no 
admixture of anything but sensation. 
But by comparing, repeating and con- 
trasting these, we may form complex 
ideas; yet at the end of the process we 

have no more than we started with, so 
82 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

far as the material of knowledge goes, 
for the product contains only what was 
given in the original impression. The 
validity of knowledge is therefore directly 
dependent upon the trustworthiness of 
the report which the senses bring to us 
regarding the external objects which 
stimulate them. 

Yet Locke admits that the senses in a 
measure deceive us. The greater part 
of our sensations are not copies at all of 
externally existing realities. The quali- 
ties which we know through sensation, 
are divided into tw^o classes. There are 
primary qualities, such as extension, 
form, solidity, mobility, which are nec- 
essarily connected with the conception 
of an object and which really exist in 
external things just as we perceive them. 
But secondary qualities, like color, sound, 
smell, are only the ways in which cor- 
responding external conditions affect us. 
The redness, for example, is not in the 
object, but in the perceiving subject. 
There is in the object only a certain 

condition which produces in the subject 

83 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

the sensation of redness, but which, is 
by no means like it. Secondary quali- 
ties are, therefore, not really qualities at 
all, but sensations. In this doctrine of 
the subjective character of secondary 
qualities, we have the first premonitory 
hint of the skepticism which would later 
be developed out of the system; but 
Locke did not so interpret it. We get 
our knowledge only from sensations, but 
sensation does not always tell us a 
straight story about our experiences. It 
produces the impression that certain 
(secondary) qualities exist without and 
independent of us, whereas these so- 
called qualities are only the way in 
which we are affected by the object. 
Locke's successors ask, "How do you 
know that primary qualities exist just as 
your sensations say they do, if you ad- 
mit that secondary qualities do not so 
exist?" The system of Locke contains 
no answer for this dilemma, but Locke 
guards himself by carefully maintaining 
the distinction between the two classes 

of qualities. 

84 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

Again in his idea of substance, I<ocke 
opens another door to the wave of skep- 
ticism which was only too ready to 
sweep in and overwhelm the confiding 
philosopher in the citadel of his own 
system. Since our- knowledge comes 
only through impressions, we cannot 
have any direct knowledge of substance, 
but only of qualities, for substance it- 
self, apart from qualities, cannot make 
any impression upon our organs of sense. 
The idea of substance, therefore, is sim- 
ply a combination of various simple 
ideas which we habitually receive to- 
gether. For example, the substance of 
the object which we call a table, is just 
a combination of the particular qualities 
which are represented to us through cer- 
tain sensations of hardness, form, color, 
etc. When metaphysics tries to get be- 
low these and inquire for the substrate 
in which these qualities inhere, the 
human understanding has transgressed 
its limits. Thus, again, the outer world 
is rendered apparently less substantial 

than it appears to the naive mind, or 

85 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

than it was according to the metaphys- 
ics of the scholastics or of Descartes. 

Cause is also a complex idea which 
comes from the observation of repeated 
changes of things owing to the action of 
other things upon them. We observe re- 
peatedly that a certain act or occurrence 
is followed or accompanied by another 
certain occurrence, and we assume that 
the first produces the second. For ex- 
ample, if you drop a book, a noise fol- 
lows; if you pinch your arm, there is a 
feeling of pain. We assume the relation 
of cause and effect to account for phenom- 
ena, which are presented to our senses 
only as unvarying coincidences. This 
was the ground from v/hich Hume 
started for the development of his skep- 
ticism by perfectly logical steps. 

On this purely sensational theory of 
knowledge, evidently all our knowledge 
must be of particular things. The uni- 
versal, species, genus, etc., are the pro- 
duct of our mental activity, abstracting 
the distinctive qualities of each object, 

and generalizing the qualities common 

86 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

to a number of objects. It follows also 
that our knowledge really reaches only 
to the perception of the relation of agree- 
ment or disagreement between our ideas. 
We take our simple ideas as valid repre- 
sentatives of some sort of external real- 
ity because they come to us independent 
of our activity, and hence we may as- 
sume that they are caused from without, 
but this involves an assumption which is 
not susceptible of proof. But we know 
our own existence immediately, says 
Locke, though we have no metaphysical 
knowledge of the essence of the soul, 
and we have a demonstrable knowledge 
of the existence of God, proven by a 
modified form of the cosmological argu- 
ment, although we cannot know His 
essence any more than our own. These 
two facts constitute the highest points of 
our knowledge. 

The establishment of all knowledge 
upon this basis of mere sensation and 
the rejection of all knowledge which 
cannot be so grounded, the removal of 

innate ideas from the sphere of valid 
87 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS THEOLOGY 

knowledge, and especially from tlie 
realm of ethics, were the instrument for 
the "clearing np" of ethical ideas and 
the setting aside of all those fanatical 
and antinomian notions which had been 
supported by the undemonstrable but 
irrefutable argument: ''I feel it so with- 
in me; I have it as an innate idea.'* 
All ideas, whether ethical or religious, 
must obtain the sanction of the under- 
standing operating through sensation or 
reflection. This is the starting-point 
for the Aufklarung^ or Enlightenment, 
in the realm of ethics, and it w^as this 
which furnished the practical motive for 
Locke's formulation of his theory of 
knowledge. 

The outcome of this limitation of 
knowledge to the materials received 
through sensation was, as we have seen, 
and as is perfectly well known in the 
history of philosophy, the theory of 
knowledge known as sensationalism, an 
empirical theory, according to which 
knowledge cannot logically be extended 
beyond the cognition of particular im- 

88 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

pressions derived from particular phe- 
nomena. In Locke's own mind, this 
system was without serious revolution- 
ary consequences. With him it was 
merely an altogether admirable means 
of ridding the realm of philosophy of a 
series of problems with which it was not 
competent to deal, and of clearing up 
our ideas about such objects as v/e could 
really know. For him there was in it 
no subversion of existing and orthodox 
theories of morals or religion. It w^as 
only in the hands of his successors, who 
adopted the principles which he had an- 
nounced and carried them out to a more 
logical conclusion, that the serious re- 
sults of the system are seen. There 
are four lines of development which 
may be traced from Locke's thought in 
regard to the source and nature of knowl- 
edge. These were found in the appli- 
cation of his principles to a further 
development of the theory of knowl- 
edge, to natural science, to religion, and 
to ethics. In each one of these fields 

the results reached were of an extreme 

89 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS THEOLOGY 

and revolutionary character, such as 
would have startled and shocked the de- 
vout philosopher who was really respon- 
sible for their origination. 

I. The first development of the the- 
ory of knowledge beyond the point at 
which lyocke left it, came through the 
thought of Berkeley. Taking up 
Locke's conception of secondary quali- 
ties, which are not objective but which 
represent the way in which certain ex- 
ternal conditions affect our sensibilities, 
and the corresponding idea that sub- 
stance is something beyond the reach of 
our knowing faculties, Berkeley asked 
the very natural question. How can we 
tell that the case is not the same with 
regard to the primary qualities as with 
the secondary? And since we cannot 
perceive substance through impressions, 
what is our guarantee for the real exist- 
ence of substance? And if primary 
qualities, secondary qualities, and sub- 
stance are all made merely subjective 
affections, what is there left of reality 

outside of us? Berkeley answered these 
90 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

questions by denying that there is any 
guarantee for any such objective mate- 
rial existence. But the idea of cause 
still holds good with Berkeley, and there 
must be something to explain the rise of 
the ideas in our minds. This is done by 
referring them to the direct activity of 
God. There is no external reality ex- 
cept the Deity. The result is a system 
of absolute idealism, or spiritual 
monism. 

One-half of the external universe was 
therefore annihilated by Berkeley; the 
other half was annihilated by Hume, 
who attacked the conception of causa- 
tion as without real validity, and conse- 
quently left no more ground for the ac- 
ceptance of an external spiritual reality 
as cause for our ideas, than Berkely had 
seen for an external material reality. 
Hume's aim, like I^ocke's, has been "a 
serious inquiry into the nature of human 
understanding'* to clear away the rub- 
bish of old metaphysics. He calls him- 
self a skeptic, and it is by this name 

that he has been generally characterized. 

91 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

But his conclusions were simply a log- 
ical development from the philosophical 
basis which Locke gave in his empiri- 
cism and sensationalism. If we have 
no knowledge except such as comes to 
us through sensuous impressions, cer- 
tainly we have no demonstrable knowl- 
edge of any cause for these impressions, 
either material or spiritual. If the out- 
come of this is not palatable, we must 
not blame Hume but the originator of 
the principles which Hume developed. 
As the strictly philosophical reaction 
against the extreme conclusions which 
Hume reached in his skeptical philoso- 
phy came the so-called Scottish philoso- 
phy, led by Reid. It was the anti- 
religious and anti-theological aspect of 
Hume's results which aroused Reid to 
his revolt. Hume's conclusion had 
been that, since we know only our im- 
pressions and have neither a guarantee 
for the validity of these as relating to 
external realities, nor any valid principle 
for connecting them, knowledge of real- 
ity vanishes. Reid admitted skepticism 

92 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

as the logical outcome from Locke's psy- 
chological principle, sensationalism. It 
was in the field of psychology, therefore, 
that he found the battle, audit was there 
that he fought it out. He adopted as 
his principle a thorough inductive study 
of the facts of the mental life. All that 
is found to be*the actual product of the 
mind's activity is considered self-evident 
and necessarily true. For example, since 
the idea of causation actually exists in 
the human mind, it must be objectively 
valid. This is one of the axioms which 
cannot be proven, but the validity of 
which is testified to by the universal 
consciousness of mankind. It is the 
"common-sense" of men — the consensits 
gentium — which constitutes the sole cri- 
terion of the validity of knowledge, and 
Vv^hich furnishes the connecting link be- 
tween our subjective states and the exter- 
nal reality which gives value to them. 
The introduction of this momentous 
assumption, without proof, is what Kant 
calls "dogmatism." Before beginning 

his answer to Hume, Reid goes over the 
93 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL' S THEOLOGY 

whole development of tlie system wHcli 
he intends to oppose from Descartes to 
Hume, summing it all up under the 
name of Cartesianism. He treats of it 
as the "ideal system" or "theory of 
ideas," because it makes ideas, instead 
of reality itself, the object of our knowl- 
edge, and furnishes no satisfactory way 
of getting over from the one to the other. 
Reid's opposition to this system was the 
expression of a devout conservatism 
which shrank from allowing the highest 
realities of life to be swallowed up in a 
maze of mere impressions without reality 
and without connection. Its impulse 
was good, but it rested upon a feeble and 
tottering philosophical basis, as was soon 
shown by Kant. Nevertheless, it was 
useful in tiding over the period of nega- 
tion which resulted from the development 
of skepticism, and it further furnished 
valuable contributions to ethics and to 
empirical psychology. 

2. The same principles upon which 
Berkeley developed his idealistic meta- 
physics and Hume his skeptical theory 

94 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

of knowledge, were applied directly to 
natural science and to the phenomena of 
the mind, by Newton and Hartley re- 
spectively. It is Newton who ushers in 
the modern era of science, the character- 
istic of which is the study of nature as 
a system of forces. His great principle 
was: "Abandon substantial forms and 
occult qualities and reduce natural phe- 
nomena to mathematical laws." This 
idea of rejecting the consideration of 
substance or substrate and observing only 
qualities, is plainly lyockian. The only 
thing to be considered in nature is the 
perceivable things as they affect our 
senses, and these are to be estimated 
with mathematical exactness and re- 
duced to law and rule. The outcome of 
this was a purely mechanical view of 
nature. Although a profoundly devout 
man himself, Newton saw no place for 
God within his mechanically constructed 
and perfectly running universe. The 
only possible place for God in such a 
world is at the beginning. Newton de- 
rives a physico-theological argument for 

95 



ALEXANDER GAMPBELUS THEOLOGY 

the existence and perfection of God, from 
the fact that the universe is so perfectly 
constructed that it now runs, and has 
been running ever since its creation, 
without any interference from God and 
without the introduction of any forces 
other than those which he describes and 
estimates as natural laws. 

This mechanical theory, which worked 
with such beautiful perfection, especially 
in an age when science took little ac- 
count of the more intricate problems of 
biolog-v, was naturallv transferred from 
the science of nature to the science of 
mind. Mental as well as material phe- 
nomena were considered as being ex- 
plicable according to laws which could 
be mathematically determined. Here 
again it was the pious conviction of 
those who carried out this line of 
thought, that religion would be not only 
not interfered with by it, but even as- 
sisted, for faith in God being an actual 
fact in the mind, would thereby receive 
the support of positive demonstration. 

But, in spite of their excellent inten- 

96 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

tions, the purport of their system is very 
obvious. It was a long stride in the 
direction of absolute materialism and 
needed only another application of rig- 
orous logic, which it took a Frenchman 
to give, to bring it to that conclusion. 

3. The application of the princi- 
ples of the Enlightenment, that is, of 
lyocke's philosophy, to religion^ pro- 
duced Deism. It was a rationalistic, 
naturalistic, critical attempt to get at 
the essence of religion, and especially of 
Christianity, by reducing it to a system 
which the human intellect, as defined 
by lyocke, could grasp in its entirety 
and in all its details. It would tolerate 
no mystery. It would permit no dark 
place to remain unillumined, and no 
difficulty unsolved. All must be "clear 
and distinct"; otherwise it could not be 
known to be true. lyocke, as the apos- 
tle of clearness and the founder of the 
English Enlightenment, became thus 
unintentionally the corner-stone of De- 
ism. The inquiry into the limits and 

extent of knowledge, which started with 

7 97 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

a view to clearing away the tottering 
yet dogmatically affirmed speculations of 
pseudo-knowledge and ended by clear- 
ing away everything which did not 
attest its validity by the testimony of 
the senses, was, if the premises were 
granted, the legitimate basis for a clear- 
ing away of all positive religion. Ac- 
cordingly, the Deists set out to uproot 
ever}' tenet, dogmatic or historical, 
which did not agree with reason so 
defined. 

It was only gradually that the signifi- 
cance of this attempt and the principles 
upon which it rested came to light. As 
the passion for clearness and distinctness 
of knowledge increased, permitting noth- 
ing to be accepted which could not be 
proved to reason; and, as the develop- 
ment of the theory of knowledge by 
Berkeley and Hume showed more and 
more the impotence of the human rea- 
son to know reality of any sort. Deism 
became more and more destructive of all 
that had been held religiously sacred. 

At first accepting the possibility and 

98 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

actuality of divine revelation, they soon 
rejected those parts of revealed religion 
which seemed unreasonable according to 
their sensational empiricism. Soon re- 
ligion became purely ethical, with the 
single article of faith, "Believe in God," 
and the single precept, "Do your duty." 
Everything more than this in religion 
is false and harmful. 

A variety of causes which had been 
long in operation produced a conception 
of God as a transcendent and supramun- 
dane Being who set the universe going 
in the beginning and then left it. The 
operation of natural forces was interpre- 
ted as evidence of God's absence, rather 
than his presence. God could come into 
the world again only by breaking in as 
an intruder, defying natural law and 
throwing the universe into temporary 
disorder. When revealed religion was 
conceived to be dependent upon mira- 
cles, which were interpreted as divine 
incursions into a world which had no 
place for God in its normal order, it was 
but natural that those who attached 

99 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

great importance to the meclianical the- 
ory of the universe and the perfect order- 
liness of its workings, should find them- 
selves inclined to discredit revealed 
religion. The Enlightenment favored 
rather "natural religion" and "natural 
theology," which argued glibly from the 
constitution of nature to the existence of 
God, but realized no present and vital 
connection between God and the world. 
This is the stage of the development to 
which the name Deism most accurately 
applies. This was the stage at which 
in general English deistic thought 
stopped, but it stopped only when it be- 
came evident that to go farther involved 
the final plunge into atheism. 

It was Hume, skeptic though he was, 
and by the very fact of his skepticism, 
who brought Deism to its culmination 
and thereby wrought its overthrow. 
The destruction of the rational argu- 
ments for the existence of God as con- 
ceived by all thinkers of this time, on 
the lyockian basis, left no stopping point 
short of rejection of belief in God, which 

lOO 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

might be atheism or might be only 
agnosticism. lyOgical rigidity is not the 
prevailing characteristic of English phi- 
losophy in general, and in this case 
practical considerations outweighed the 
desire for consistency. It had been 
shown through the development of 
L/Ocke's theory of knowledge into skep- 
ticism, and through the application of 
this to science and to religion, that upon 
this philosophical basis there could be 
no outcome except a purely negative 
one. There seemed to be no other basis 
to fall back upon. But, whether logical 
or not, the English mind refuses to rest 
in negation. There must be a recon- 
struction of some sort to meet the prac- 
tical demands of life. The Scottish 
philosophy of Reid and his successors 
had been an attempt at this, practically 
useful in many ways but theoretically a 
failure. The other attempt to avoid the 
issue in pure negation came through the 
ethical thought of the century. 

4. The development of moral philoso* 
phy in the eighteenth century was a 

lOI 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

struggle for the independence of ethics, 
as Deism was a struggle for independ- 
ence of religion. Hobbes had aimed to 
emancipate morals from ecclesiastical 
domination by giving Right a different 
definition than that which had been 
commonly accepted, namely, the will of 
God. But he effected merely an ex- 
change of masters, for in freeing ethics 
from the control of religion, he subjected 
it to the state. The individual has sur- 
rendered his rights to the sovereign, and 
henceforth the will of the sovereign con- 
stitutes the right and disobedience to the 
sovereign constitutes wrong. Even here 
there is an implicit ethical individual- 
ism, for the original source for the sover- 
eign's authority to declare what is right 
is in the individuals who have surren- 
dered their rights to him. The course 
of ethical thought during the century 
had for its aim the discovery of a system 
in which the individual man would be 
not only the source but the unit of all 
moral judgments. 

lyocke himself laid strong emphasis on 

I02 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

the conception of law as constituting the 
authority in morals, but the enforcement 
of the law, whether of God, the state, or 
public opinion, depends on the individ- 
ual's anticipation of pleasure or pain to 
be derived from the contemplated course 
of action. A sensational theory of 
knowledge is naturally and logically ac- 
companied by a hedonistic theory of eth- 
ics, and in so far Locke's ethical theory 
was the logical outcome of his philoso- 
phy. The same feature is seen through- 
out the century in varying forms in 
various ethical systems. The return is 
always to the individual. His pains and 
his pleasures are the ultimate source of 
ethical control. With Shaftesbury, this 
individualism appears in its least objec- 
tionable form, disguised by a halo of 
* 'enthusiasm for society"; but even here 
there is still an individualistic reference 
in the final insistence upon this enthusi- 
asm for society as not really an end in 
itself, but as a means whereby the indi- 
vidual will attain his highest happiness. 

At the same time, Shaftesbury criticises 

103 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

positive Christianity on the ground that 
it degrades virtue by making it the price 
of future eternal happiness. Yet his own 
system, when rigidly interpreted, simply 
substitutes present and immediate hap- 
piness for a far-away state of eternal 
bliss as the rew^ard for virtue. Hume 
was a thorough and outspoken empiricist 
in morals, making all conduct depend 
upon the passions, which operate me- 
chanically under the stimuli of pleasure 
and pain. Passing over the numerous 
other representatives of this classical 
period of English ethical theory, who, 
in varying degree and in various forms, 
give expression to these same principles 
of hedonism as the motive and sensation- 
alism as the means of apprehending eth- 
ical ideas, all of which is traceable back 
to lyocke — we may mention, finally, 
Paley as the culmination of the whole 
movement. 

Paley 's ethical system can be con- 
densed into a single sentence. It is: to 
do good to one's neighbor, in obedience 

to the will of God, in the hope of an 

104 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

eternal reward. The elements of this 
are so apparent that it scarcely needs 
analysis: the revealed will of God as au- 
thority in ethics, and a thorough utilitari- 
anism, the content of which is benevo- 
lent action, but the motive to which is 
unadulterated egoism. Such a system as 
this might satisfy the practical demands 
for some sort of control of conduct. In 
a transition stage, when the philosoph- 
ical basis was being proved adequate, 
this might be useful as an expression of 
the common-sense of mankind as applied 
to the problems of conduct. It is an 
ethics oi good order, good citizenship 
and general respectability, and is such a 
system as might naturally be formulated 
by a man of the world intent only on 
laying down practical rules for the con- 
trol of overt acts. The trouble with it 
was that the element of morality was 
lacking, just as the element of religion 
was lacking in the final outcome of 
deistic thought which had started in to 
reduce religion to its essential elements. 

In both cases, the most essential element, 
105 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

the ver>^ essence itself, had been elimi- 
nated. 

The difference between the two was 
that while irreligious deism obviously 
led the way to all kinds of negative and 
destructive thought, the non-moral ethics 
of egoistic hedonism appeared to lead to 
nothing worse than itself, and to be in 
itself a system which, if not theoret- 
ically admirable, was at least practically 
workable. It was the ethics of Paley 
which was dominant in all English and 
American universities at the begfinning: 
of the present century, and Y\^hich is 
most thoroughly representative of the 
condition of ethical theory at that time. 

These are the general features of the 
philosophical movements of the eight- 
eenth century; a theory of knowledge, 
at the beginning individualistic and sen- 
sationalistic, and at the end skeptical, 
not to say agnostic; an application of 
this to natural science resulting in a 
rigidly mechanical explanation of all 
phenomena, both material and mental; 

an application to religion, ending in the 

io6 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

destruction of religion upon the accepted 
presuppositions; an application to ethics 
to solve the problem — given an individ- 
ual as defined by lyocke, how can you 
get him into working relations with 
others so as to form society, and how 
explain and validate the laws which 
govern his conduct as a member of so- 
ciety ? — ending in an egoistic utilitarian- 
ism from which the element of morality 
was excluded. The general aspect of 
the field is not a pleasing one, and the 
positive results seem to be slight and 
valueless. They are to be valued rather 
as a process of clearing the ground and 
of getting the problem more definitely 
present in consciousness. Obviously, 
the philosophical need was for a new 
conception of the individual which 
might serve as a basis for the reconstruc- 
tion of ethics, religion and science, such 
as was impossible upon the basis of 
Locke's philosophy. 

It may be proper here to consider 
briefly the points of contact which ap- 
pear between Mr. Campbell's thought 
107 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

and the philosophy of the Enlighten- 
ment as we have here outlined it. It is 
important to observe in the first place, 
that he read I^ocke's works early in life, 
adopted his system of philosophy, and 
ever afterward continued to hold it. His 
biographer, Richardson, says that even 
before he entered the University, "he 
learned greatly to admire the character 
and works of John Locke, whose Letters 
on Toleration seem to have fixed his 
ideas of religious and of civil liberty." 
At the same time he studied also the 
Essay on Human Understanding, and 
made the theory which it presents the 
basis of all his future philosophizing. 

As for Mr. Campbell's relation to the 
philosophy of the eighteenth century, 
vv^e can say that he reacted against the 
results which it developed, but accepted 
in the main the principles upon which 
it was based. His method, therefore, 
in so far as he had a philosophical 
method in his thinking, was the method 
of the Enlightenment. This character- 
istic he had in common with most of 

io8 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

the theologians and apologists of his 
time and of the generation or two pre- 
ceding, who tried to stem the tide of in- 
fidelity and skepticism which came with 
the development of Deism. This double 
attitude, the rejection of the results and 
the acceptance of the method, is shown 
in his attitude toward Deism and the 
criticisms which he passes upon it. 
Speaking of the reliance of the deists 
upon pure reason, and their considera- 
tion of this as sufficient to account for 
natural religion, he refers to "the ac- 
knowledged principles of Locke" as 
contradicting them. Again he says: 
"Are not all of our ideas the result of 
sensation and reflection?" (^Christian 
Baptist^ p. 271). 

It was the inconsistency of the deists, 
in accepting Locke's theory of knowl- 
edge and then claiming to be able to 
know God by the reason, which especial- 
ly called forth his criticism. "These 
truths, then, (God, human soul, heaven, 
etc.,) however deists may boast, are all 

borrowed from the Bible, hence there is 
109 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

not a rational deist in the universe. . . 
They are the poorest, driveling philoso- 
phers that ever assumed the name." 
Again: "Either unqualified atheism, or 
faith in Jesus as the Son of God (2. ^., 
knowledge of spiritual things through 
revelation) are the legitimate stopping 
places on principles of sound reasoning 
and good logic. All that halt between 
these extremes are besotted with brutish 
stupidity. The ox and the ass are their 
reprovers. ' ' 

This is precisely in line with what 
Hume and the French exponents of nat- 
uralism had shown, that, given such a 
reason as lay at the basis of Locke's 
system, and the principles of sound rea- 
soning and good logic will not allow one 
to stop short of the final abyss of athe- 
ism. This result, which had been ac- 
cepted as final by such Frenchmen as 
Diderot and D'Alembert, was for Camp- 
bell only a reductio ad absurditm^ so a 
fresh start must be taken to avoid this 
downward path. The start is made 

again with Locke, but the principles 

no 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

■whicii Ivocke laid down as to the limita- 
tion of knowledge are now applied sub- 
ject to an important condition. It is not 
all knowledge that comes from sensation 
and reflection, but only knowledge of 
natural or material things. It is seen, 
therefore, that there is a division in the 
field of knowledge. Natural things, 
such as have impressions corresponding 
to them, are known through ordinary 
sensation; spiritual things are known 
only by divine revelation. Revelation, 
to be sure, operates through the senses, 
but it opens up to the senses a field 
which is entirely closed to the natural 
reason. 

In general, on the application of phil- 
osophical method in religion and theol- 
ogy, Campbell was averse to speculation, 
just as the philosophy of the Enlighten- 
ment had been averse to speculation and 
had rather pinned its faith to the ob- 
servation of fact and the noting of the 
items of sensuous experience. He says: 
"Speculation in philosophy has been 

widely discarded from approved systems. 

in 



ALEXANDER CAAIP BELL'S THEOLOGY 

Since the days of Bacon, our scientific 
men have adopted the practical and truly 
scientific mode — that is, they have 
stopped where human intellect found a 
bound over which it could not pass, and 
have been content to go no farther than 
material objects, analyzed, gave out 
their qualities and left the manner of 
their existence as beyond the bounds of 
created intellect. We plead for the 
same principle in the contemplation of 
religious truth. . . So religious truth 
is to be deduced from the revelations 
which the Deity has been pleased to give 
toman." Here it will be observed that 
it is taken for granted that the inductive 
method of Bacon and the Lockian theo- 
ry of knowledge are the end and con- 
summation of philosophical method. 

Closely connected with this horror of 
speculation is Mr. Campbell's conviction 
of the worthlessness of creeds for relig- 
ious and ecclesiastical life, since thev are 
concerned, not with the actual and vital 
facts of religion, but with the deduction 
of theories about those facts. This, he 

112 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS 

says, is an intrusion of tlie puny powers 
of man's intellect into a realm which it 
is not competent to handle, and concern- 
ing which it has not pleased God to re- 
veal to us the reality. 

So much for the similarity of Mr. 
Campbell's general point of view and 
method to the method of Locke's philos- 
ophy. When we come to the consider- 
ation of his particular doctrines, it will 
appear that the influence of the Lockian 
philosophy is no less marked in the de- 
tails than in the general character of his 
thought. Aside from the points of con- 
tact which have already been noted, 
there may be mentioned here in a pre- 
liminary way, three particulars in which 
this influence of the philosophical pre- 
supposition is especially apparent : i. 
The limitation of man's natural knowl- 
edge to sensuous things and the entire 
dependence upon revelation for knowl- 
edge of God and spiritual things gener- 
ally, with which is connected his view 
of inspiration and authority, and the 

way in which these act upon men. 
8 113 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS THEOLOGY 

2. The nature of faith and its relation to 
repentance, involving the general ques- 
tion of the relation of the intellect to 
the will. 3. The nature and instruments 
of conversion, especially the doctrine of 
the influence of the Holy Spirit only 

through the written Word. 

114 



Chapter III 
Theological Heritage 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGK. 

I. Theoi<ogy of thk Eni,ightenmknT: 

1. Deism and orthodox apologetics. 

2. Character of triumphant orthodoxy. 

II. Defects of Scholastic Cai,vinism: 

1. Lacked idea of development. 

2. Used the Bible unintelligently. 

3. Failed to recognize individual responsibility. 

III. Covenant Theoi,ogy Suppi^ied These 

Defects: 

1. Distinction between dispensations. 

2. New method of exegesis. 

3. Covenant idea — man's part in salvation. 

IV. Infi^uence of Covenant Theoi,ogy: 

1. In Holland — never became a sect. 

2. In England — Neonomians and Antino- 

mians. 

3. In Scotland — relaxation of Cahdnism in 

established church ; dispensation idea 
among Seceders. 

V. INFI.UENCE ON Campbei.i<: 

1. His contact with it. 

2. Points of similarity. 

3. His attitude toward his sources. 

VI. Summary of Phii,osophicai< and Theo^ 

IvOGlCAI, INFI^UENCES. 
ii6 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE. 

Two streams of influence united to 
determine the theology of the latter part 
of the eighteenth century. First, the 
theology of the English Enlightenment, 
based directly on the principles of 
lyocke's philosophy and finding its chief 
activity in defending Christianity against 
the assaults of Deism; a theology which 
ran largely to apologetics, which had at 
its core the Puritan conception of a 
transcendent God, which laid emphasis 
chiefly upon God's activity as a creative 
intelligence who made the universe in 
the beginning and whose existence can 
be demonstrated by arguments drawn 
from the constitution of nature; a the- 
ology which, while it held the Bible in 
almost superstitious reverence, gloried 
especially in its ability to prove, by the 
arguments of natural theology, the rea- 
sonableness of Christianity as delivered 

117 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

in the Scriptures. Second, a line of 
theological development which had its 
origin on the continent, partly in the 
warfare of Scholastic Protestantism in 
the attack and defense of Calvinism, and 
partly in the reaction against the condi- 
tions which that warfare produced. 

The philosophy of Locke was as 
determinative for English theology in 
the eighteenth century as it was for the 
strictly philosophical thought of the 
same period. The emancipation of phi- 
losophy from its mediseval bondage to 
the church and to theology had made, 
with Descartes, the beginning of a new 
epoch in philosophy. Casting aside the 
mass of traditions, ecclesiastical dogmas 
and received beliefs with which every 
speculator was supposed to begin, Des- 
cartes proposed to start from the stand- 
point of a doubt as nearly universal as 
possible. Naturally the doubt extended 
itself to the sphere of theology and to 
the fundamental truths of religion, and 
the individual doubter did not always 

mount up from the depths of his doubt 
ii8 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

on the wings of a higher certainty, with 
as great facility as the originator of the 
method had done. The relation of 
dependence between philosophy and 
theology was reversed, and "rational 
theology" came into favor. 

lyocke's philosophy was epoch mak- 
ing, as we have seen, because it sowed 
the seeds for a negative development in 
all the departments of thought to which 
it was applied. As in the theory of 
knowledge, metaphysics and ethics, so in 
theology. The deistic movement, which 
was noticed in the preceding chapter 
on the eighteenth century philosophy, 
might, with equal appropriateness have 
been classed here, for Deism was one 
side of the theology of the Enlight- 
enment. It was that side which pro- 
fessed to find in the current philosophy 
a basis for rational belief in the exist- 
ence of God and the moral order of the 
world, entirely apart from any super- 
natural revelation, but did not find any 
rational proof of the truth of the Chris- 
tian revelation. 

119 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

The other side of the theology of the 
Enlightenment was represented by the 
apologists for positive Christianity. 
Both the deists and the apologists pro- 
ceeded upon the principles of the Aiif- 
klarung^ the yearning after clearness and 
exactness of knowledge, proofs, demon- 
strations and explanations. Both made 
their appeal to the constitution of nature 
as the foundation of man's knowledge 
of God, and both based their knowledge 
of nature upon the testimony of the 
senses. The idea of God, which is the 
real measure of any theology, was much 
the same with both deists and apolo- 
gists. Both conceived of God as a crea- 
tive intelligence who had been present 
and active at the formation of the 
w^orld, and had then turned it over to 
the operation of natural law and had 
retired into infinite space. Any subse- 
quent return of God to reveal himself or 
control the course of affairs on earth, is 
really an interruption of the normal 
and orderly operation of natural laws. 
The deists maintained that it could not 

120 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

be proved that such interruptions had 
ever occurred ; the apologists maintained 
that it could. 

The struggle which ensued between 
these two positions was a battle of 
giants. It dwarfed into significance 
every other theological controversy of 
the time. The deists were at the ob- 
vious disadvantage of being attacked in 
both front and rear. The apologists as- 
serted that more could be proved than 
they were willing to admit, while the 
followers of Hume and the representa- 
tives of French Naturalism maintained 
that not even the existence of God could 
be established on the basis of sensation- 
alism which they all occupied. The 
deists were on a slippery incline, the 
tendency of which was constantly to 
precipitate them to lower depths. In 
the heat of the conflict they were forced 
to occupy lower and lower ground, i. e.^ 
to carry their own presuppositions nearer 
to their logical conclusion to get firm 
ground beneath their feet, and their 
position thereby became the more repul- 

121 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

sive to the conservative English mind, 
which cares more for results than for 
logic. Yet there was an important 
branch of Deism in England which long 
continued to be the supporter of prac- 
tical righteousness. Even after the re- 
ductio ad absurduin in sheer atheism, it 
shared the conservatism of its opponents 
who were willing to sacrifice logical 
consistency to the interests of religion 
and morality. So its adherents clung 
to their shadowy idea of a far-away God 
who will in some undefined way be hon- 
ored by a virtuous life, and will by some 
equally mysterious means reward right- 
eousness and punish sin. It reduced it- 
self practically to the teaching of pure 
morality. So considered, it compared 
favorably with the intolerance of self- 
styled orthodoxy and the war of creeds 
and confessions which went on about 
it with no more of either ethics or relig- 
ion than it had itself. The cause of tol- 
eration and the movements of philan- 
thropy were advanced through its minis- 
trations more than through those of the 

122 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

orthodox. But with all its virtues it 
was not religion. It had lost the depth 
of religious life and had become a pol- 
ished, urbane, cultured, humane, ethical 
system. It was a credit to the society 
and the civilization -which produced it, 
but it was not a religion. 

When the apologists had done their 
work, when Butler had hurled the thun- 
derbolts of his Analogy of Religion and 
Paley his Evidences of Christianity 
against Deism, it was generally con- 
ceded that the victory rested with the 
orthodox, by the combined force of 
scholarship, conservatism and piety. 
The apologists had started out to prove 
that it is more reasonable to believe in a 
God who comes into his world occasion- 
ally to direct eVents and provide for the 
future happiness of the faithful, than to 
believe in a God who has had nothing to 
do with the world since its creation ex- 
cept to sit afar off and watch it go. The 
consensus of opinion was that they had 
proved it, and that phase of unbelief 

was thenceforth not to be feared. 
123 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

But, as is shown by the history of all 
doctrinal controversies, and nowhere 
more clearly than here, the hand of 
the theologian, like that of the dyer, 
is subdued to what it works in. When 
Deism had been overthrown, it was dis- 
covered that orthodoxy, in overthrowing 
it, had become like it. Its God was far 
off. It found the sanctions of religion 
and morality alike in egoistic utilitari- 
anism. It was cold, hard, rigid and 
dead. The established church was in 
an especially unhappy condition. There 
was need for a revival of both relio:ion 
and theology. The revival of religion 
came with the Wesleyan and Evangel- 
ical revival. The renaissance of the- 
ology did not come until much later, 
and English theologians faced the nine- 
teenth century with a system of doctrine 
which had done honorable service but 
had already exhibited its defects. 

Turning to the continent to trace the 
genesis of the second g'eneral line of 
theological influence, it is necessary to 

go back to the period immediately fol- 

124 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

lowing the Reformation, the period 
which has been designated as the age of 
Protestant Scholasticism, and which 
might be called the age of scholastic 
Calvinism. Certain characteristics which 
were inherent in the nature of Calvinism 
constituted the need for the introduction 
of a new principle in theology. Fore- 
most among these may be mentioned the 
lack of the historic sense. There was, 
even in the mind of Calvin himself, and 
still more conspicuously in his immediate 
successors, a total failure to grasp the 
idea of development, whereby it may be 
possible for God to change his methods 
of dealing with men as the needs of men 
change. The lack of this simple con- 
ception (which has been absent much 
more than it has been present in the his- 
tory of Christian thought) made it nec- 
essary to insist upon the immutability 
of the divine decrees, upon the prede- 
termination of every individual's salva- 
tion or damnation from all eternity, 
upon the substantial identity of the 

method of salvation and of the revela- 

125 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL' S THEOLOGY 

tion of God as set forth in the Old and 
New Testaments. For God to deter- 
mine upon the salvation of a righteous 
man without having determined it be- 
fore all ages, would be for God to change 
his mind; and that would be inconsist- 
ent with his character as the Eternal 
One. For God to establish one method 
of salvation for one age, and another 
for a later age, would be inconsistent 
with the changelessness which must 
mark the divine character. 

Growing immediately out of this ab- 
sence of the idea of development, was a 
forced and mechanical use of Scripture. 
The war among Protestant dogmatists 
had quickly driven them to the assertion 
of the verbal inspiration and absolute 
inerrancy of Scripture. This was an in- 
creased emphasis upon the formal prin- 
ciple of Protestantism — the authority of 
the Bible — and it was accompanied by 
a grossly mechanical view of the nature 
of the Scriptures and the sort of author- 
ity which they are to exercise. Since 

no distinction was made between differ- 
126 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

ent periods of God's dealings witli men, 
or different dispensations, all books of 
the Bible were used indiscriminately as 
* 'arsenals of proof-texts" from wbicli to 
draw weapons for the war against tbeo- 
logical adversaries. - One of the very 
first effects of the rise of doctrinal differ- 
ences in Protestantism was this abuse of 
the Bible under the plea of exalting it 
as the sole authority. The theory of 
verbal inspiration was the last resource 
of dogmatic and divided Protestantism, 
when each sect was trying to unite 
Christendom on the basis of its own com- 
plete theological system. The misuse 
of Scripture was most flagrant among 
Calvinistic champions of the second 
generation. 

As a third defect of Calvinism may be 
mentioned the fact that its most essen- 
tial doctrines were based on a conception 
of man which was being undermined by 
the development of individualism. As 
the sense of race unity became weaker 
and the worth of the individual was 

more distinctly affirmed, such doctrines 

127 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

as that of inherited original sin, in all 
its Calvinistic rigors, became difficult to 
explain and defend satisfactorily. Even 
where the far-reaching consequences of 
Adam's sin were not categorically de- 
nied, it was impossible for the Fall and 
the inherited sin of the race to occupy 
such an important place in the thought 
of those who were imbued with the mod- 
ern idea of the freedom and responsibil- 
ity of the individual. The demand was 
for an anthropology and a soteriology 
which would leave more scope for each 
man to work out his own salvation. 
Romanism had proposed to save men e7z 
masse in the church. Calvinism re- 
sponded to the individualizing tendency 
of the age so far as to propose to save a 
few men in detail, but without their 
active co-operation. The doctrines of 
the fall of all men in Adam and the 
atonement by the death of Christ were 
too firmly fixed to be removed, but there 
was a need for an interpretation of them 
which would be more defensible by giving 

fuller recognition to the worth of the in- 

128 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

dividual and the importance of tlie part 
i;vliich he must play in the process of 
his own salvation. In other words, the 
spirit of the times demanded a doctrine 
of salvation which would tell each man 
what to do to be saved. Calvinism did 
not do that. 

The various defections from strict Cal- 
vinism in the sixteenth century and the 
early part of the seventeenth, were in 
part attempts to remedy these defects. 
Arminianism, the most formidable of 
these revolts, was fairly successful in 
emphasizing the man -ward side of the 
process of salvation and gave some stim- 
ulus to a more reasonable method of 
using the Bible, but it contributed little 
toward the idea of development, with- 
out which there could be no rational 
method of exegesis and no satisfactory 
escape from the rigors of Calvinism. 

Of the several movements having this 
end more or less consciously in view, the 
one which most completely met the re- 
quirements, and the one which, by its 

subsequent line of influence, is most im- 
9 129 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

portant for the present consideration, is 
the Covenant or Federal Theology under 
the leadership of the Dutch theologians, 
Cocceius and Witsius. Cocceius was a 
professor of theology at the University 
of Leyden, where he died in 1669. In 
the system which he formulated there 
were valuable contributions to each of 
these three points in which Calvinism 
was defective: the idea of development, 
or the history of the plan of salvation; a 
more satisfactory and fruitful method of 
exegesis, growing out of the application 
of the distinction between the dispensa- 
tions to the Bible; and a view of the re- 
lation between God and man which at- 
tached much importance to human ac- 
tivity in salvation. 

The idea of developme7tt of the plan 
of salvation was simply the conception 
which the apostle Paul had in mind 
when he maintained that the Old Testa- 
ment law was from God and had been 
binding, but was now done away. Sim- 
ple as this idea appears, it was lost sight 

of almost immediately in the post-apos- 

130 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

tolic age. For lack of this idea, Jews 
and some Jewish Christians (Ebionites) 
insisted that the law must be perpetually 
binding, since it is from God. Gnostics 
found it necessary to deny that the Old 
Testament had ever ' been binding, in 
order to escape the obligation to keep 
the ritual law now. The orthodox, 
equally in the dark as to how they be- 
came free from the law, excused their 
disregard of it by elaborately allegoriz- 
ing it. The Reformation theologians, 
as already pointed ont, were equally 
destitute of the conception. For Luther, 
justification by faith was a doctrine of 
such overwhelming importance that he 
quite neglected to note the process by 
which man had been educated up to the 
point where justification by faith was 
possible. This one doctrine was, for 
him, the everlasting expression of the 
attitude of God toward men. The doc- 
trine of predestination represented Cal- 
vin's conception of the relation between 
God and men, — a timeless and eternal 

relation which has existed in all ages. 

131 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS THEOLOGY 

Both IvUther and Calvin read their cen- 
tral doctrines into the Old Testament by 
any method of exegesis which the neces- 
sities of the case seemed to demand. 
Since there were no Jewish Christians 
then, as there had been in the second 
century, they could take what they 
wanted from the Old Testament and 
there was no one to raise embarrassing 
questions about the perpetuity of the 
ritual law. 

The first deliberate recognition of the 
truth that God has dealt with men differ- 
ently at different times, and that He can 
give a command for a limited time with- 
out compromising the eternity of His 
nature, is found in the work of Hype- 
rius, Olevianus and Raphael Eglin, all 
sixteenth century Calvinists of strict 
type. But this, in their minds, amounted 
to no more than a discrimination be- 
tween different stages in the operation 
and ministration _ of a divine grace 
which was always absolute and irresist- 
ible. It was Cocceius who first at 
tempted to construct a complete history 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

of the process of salvation by fitting all 
the divine commands and promises as 
contained in the Scriptures, into a 
framework of successive covenants or 
dispensations. On this basis he aimed 
to construct a systematic, Biblical theol- 
ogy which would embrace, not only the 
present conditions of salvation, but also 
a statement of the steps by which these 
conditions were developed. 

The effect of this conception of devel- 
opment upon his method of exegesis and 
general attitude toward the Bible was 
immediate and salutary. Dornersays of 
Cocceius and his associates that ''simple 
piety and an ardent attachment to Script- 
ure" v/ere their leading characteristics. 
Such common-sense principles of inter- 
pretation as these were adopted: That 
the plain and obvious meaning of the 
passage is to be taken; that words are to 
be taken in their ordinary sense in con- 
nection with the context, without run- 
ning into allegory or symbolism; that 
books of the Bible are to be considered 

in their historical setting as connected 
133 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

wholes; tliat the whole Bible, even, is to 
be considered as a connected account of 
God's dealings with men, and can be in- 
terpreted only as the relations of its parts 
are understood and observed. The sin- 
gle principle which gives unity to the 
Scriptures is the idea of the history of 
the process of salvation for the human 
race, in successive dispensations, which 
runs through it all. 

These rules of interpretation seem 
commonplace and obvious now. They 
did not seem so a century ago, and in 
the days of Cocceius they were revolu- 
tionary. They meant that the com- 
mands of the Old Testament could not 
be quoted to sustain any doctrine as to 
the present means of salvation. They 
meant that proof-texts could not be 
drawn from Leviticus, Daniel and the 
Song of Songs, and used on a par with 
quotations from the Gospel of John and 
the Epistle to the Romans, to enforce the 
doctrines of Christianity. The distinc- 
tion between the dispensations thus be- 
came, even with Cocceius, the key to a 

134 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

more intelligent and discriminating use 
of the Scriptures, and he thus earned the 
title, "the father of modern exegesis." 

Yet even Cocceius underestimated the 
distinction between the Old and New 
Testaments. In his .view, the great line 
of cleavage was at the Fall. Before this 
was the Covenant of Works; after it, the 
various stages of the Covenant of Grace, 
including the Patriarchal, Jewish and 
Christian dispensations. But in spite 
of his making the abolition of the law 
and the transition from the Jewish to the 
Christian dispensation a minor division 
within the Covenant of Grace, he was 
accused by his contemporaries of paying 
too little respect to the Old Testament. 
It is easy to see how, from the stand- 
point of strict Calvinism, devoid of the 
historical sense which he possessed, this 
criticism might readily be made. 

The third point at which this Cove- 
nant Theology departed from Calvinism 
and supplied one of its defects, was in 
conceiving of the relation between God 

and i7ian in a form which gave some 
135 » 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

adequate scope to the activity of man, 
without falling into the opposite ex- 
treme of justification by works. The 
feature of the theology of Cocceius 
which gave its name to the whole 
school, was the conception of the relation 
between God and man as a covenant. It 
is of the essence of a covenant that it 
involves the co-operation of at least two 
parties. A command which must be 
obeyed simply because it is commanded 
is not a covenant; a divine, irresistible 
decree is not a covenant. A covenant 
is an agreement with two sides. 

But the covenant between God and 
man is not in all respects the same as a 
covenant between men, in which case 
the stipulations would be agreed upon 
by common consent. Here Cocceius 
guards against any infringement of the 
sovereignty of God. Since God is the 
supreme ruler, it is in his power to for- 
mulate the conditions of the covenant 
and to offer it to men to be accepted or 
rejected. 

The fundamental character of this 

136 



' THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

idea of covenants with writers of this 
school may be judged from the titles of 
a few of the principal works represent- 
ing this theology: 

Cocceius: Summa Doctringe de Foedere et Tes- 
tamentis Dei. 

Bunnann: Synopsis Theologise et CEconomise 
Foederum Dei. 

Witsius: Kconomy of the Covenants Between 
God and Man. 

Moina: De Varia Conditione et Statu Kcclesiae 
Dei sub Triplici GQconomia Foederum Dei. 

Braun: Doctrina Foederum. 

The conception of a covenant, of God 
and man entering into an agreement 
with each other, involves the idea that 
man has a definite and active part to 
perform in the relationship. The idea 
of pardon and salvation as offered and 
accepted on certain conditions is substi- 
tuted for the conception of the absolute 
power of divine grace operating on a 
man who is impotent either to accept 
or repel its advances. Hence it may be 
said that the covenant theology lays 
stress on the practical question regard- 
ing the conditions of salvation, the 

137 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

terms of the covenant as viewed from 
the man- ward side. The question, 
*'What must I do to be saved?" is not 
foreign to this theology, as it is to Cal- 
vinism. Man's part of the agreement 
constitutes the conditions of salvation; 
God's part constitutes the motives which 
impel men to enter into the covenant. 

The very fact of the practical charac- 
ter of this system, its clear statement of 
what man must do and what he has a 
right to expect when he has done it, 
opens the way to a bargain-and-sale 
conception of religion which loses the 
essential spirit of true religion. It 
shares this danger in common with 
every view of religion which departs 
from the idea of sovereign and irresisti- 
ble divine grace as the beginning and 
end of the process of salvation. If there 
is anything for man to do in the matter, 
there must be a motive to lead him to 
do it. The danger is that this motive 
will be expressed in terms which are 
essentially utilitarian. It is possible to 

disguise egoistic hedonism in the pious 

138 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

garb of desire for eternal life, and so de- 
grade religion into a shrewd transaction 
on man's part, whereby, in exchange 
for the surrender of his present freedom 
for a short period, he gains eternal hap- 
piness. It is obvious that the concep- 
tion of the relation between God and 
man as a covenant, has a certain affinity 
with the utilitarian ethics which was 
developed in England in the eighteenth 
century. 

The idea of man's relation to God 
as a covenant may be considered as an 
application of the ''social contract" the- 
ory to theology. The theory of the ori- 
gin of government by the social contract, 
starts with the hypothesis not only that 
the individual man is the unit of value 
in government, but also that there was 
actually a time when men existed as 
unsocial individuals with no govern- 
mental bonds, and that human govern- 
ment arose by the formation of a con- 
tract, whereby each individual surren- 
dered some of his rights in return for the 

benefits of association. When this the- 

139 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

ory was used for tlie defense of mon- 
archy, it was said that the contract had 
been between the subjects and the ruler, 
whereby the subjects conferred upon the 
ruler the right which each man had 
had to control himself. This was the 
form which it took with Hobbes. 
When it was used to support democracy, 
it was maintained, as by Rosseau, that 
the contract was primarily between the 
various individuals who composed the 
state, and that they could recall their 
concessions and destroy the authority of 
the government whenever it ceased to 
operate to their satisfaction. Thus the 
social contract theory was made to up- 
hold the divine right of kings or the 
right of revolution, according as it was 
interpreted. 

In its application to the relation be- 
tween God and man, the tendency was 
of necessity toward the former interpre- 
tation. Since the parties to the con- 
tract are not on an equal footing, God 
lays down the terms of association and it 

is for man to accept or reject them. 

140 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

The advocates of the governmental so- 
cial contract theory made the unsocial 
individual the unit of the whole system. 
Some, like Hobbes, maintained that 
there was no law of right and wrong be- 
fore the contract, and that therefore all 
law and all right after the contract de- 
pended on the will of the sovereign. 
Others, like Hugo Grotius, maintained a 
distinction between two kinds of law. 
Natural law exists from the begiinnino^ 
in the very nature of man and is depend- 
ent upon no contract; positive or statu- 
tory law comes into being with the rise 
of government through the social con- 
tract. Grotius was not only the great- 
est jurist of his age, but an Arminian 
theologian who adhered to the doctrine 
of the covenants as strongly as to the 
social contract theory. Accordingly, he 
recognized two kinds of divine law for 
men who are under the covenant, just as 
there are two kinds of human law for 
men who are under the social contract. 
There are moral precepts which are de- 
termined by the nature of God and 
141 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

could not conceivably be other than 
they are; and there are positive precepts 
which represent the requirements which 
God has arbitrarily imposed as the con- 
ditions of the covenant. This distinc- 
tion between positive and moral pre- 
cepts, which is found also in Mr. 
Campbell's writings, has its origin here 
in the analogy of the doctrine of the 
covenants with the social contract 
theory. 

The relation of the covenant theology 
to Calvinism was not at first one of 
open opposition. It was stimulated by 
the conditions which Calvinism had 
brought about, and it aimed at first to 
interpret some of the Calvinistic doc- 
trines in a more liberal spirit, so that it 
would not lay itself open to such sweep- 
ing denials as that contained in Armin- 
ianism. Its implications were antagon- 
istic to Calvinism, but this fact did not 
appear to the earliest advocates of the 
system. In the stress of theological 
controversy, the contradiction soon came 

to light and the Reformed Church in 

142 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

Holland was threatened with schism. 
A timely compromise averted the divi- 
sion of the church, and the covenant 
theology continued to be only a school 
of theological thought. It never be- 
came the basis of a sect. To this fact is 
due the wide dissemination of its influ- 
ence among religious thinkers of all 
parties; and for the same reason this in- 
fluence has gained inadequate recogni- 
tion in the history of Protestant thought. 
It has spread abroad in the minds of 
men who knew scarcely so much as 
the names of its originators. Conse- 
quently it is not to be expected that 
the historical connections between this 
school and later thinkers who were in- 
fluenced by it can be traced with accu- 
racy and completeness. We shall be 
content to consider this as a part of 
Mr. Campbell's theological heritage, if 
it can be shown that there are in his 
system important ideas which were in- 
troduced to the Protestant world by 
Cocceius and his associates. The influ- 
ence of the covenant theology can, hcw- 

143 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

ever, be traced to some extent not only 
in Holland, but also in England and 
Scotland. 

Soon after the Synod of Dort, England 
began to be invaded by Arminianism 
and by influences traceable to the cove- 
nant theology, and from that time 
pure Calvinism can scarcely be said to 
have existed in the Church of England. 
The Westminster Confession distin- 
guished, as Cocceius had done, between 
the Covenant of Works and the Cove- 
nant of Grace, with the dividing line at 
the Fall, and its statement of the doc- 
trine of the atonement was cast in the 
mold of the covenants. There arose 
during the seventeenth century, a con- 
troversy which- was of little consequence 
except for its influence on the church in 
Scotland during the following century. 
It was between the so-called Antino- 
mians and Neonomians, and it will be 
seen that each party emphasized one side 
of the teaching of Cocceius. The Anti- 
nomians, emphasizing the distinction 

between the Jewish and Christian dis- 

144 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

pensations, maintained that we aie no 
longer under law in any sense, but pure- 
ly under grace; i. e,^ that salvation does 
not depend upon obedience to any com- 
mands, as under the Jewish dispensation, 
but is the free gift of- God to whom he 
pleases. This was the old doctrine of 
predestination, defended by the argu- 
ment which had formerly been used 
against it. On the other hand, the 
Neonomians, laying stress upon the re- 
quirement of individual responsibility, 
held that the Christian dispensation 
leaves us still under a law, but a new 
law, since it requires each man to obey 
certain commands in order to be saved, 
but not the commands given under the 
Jewish regime. 

The direct and indirect influence of 
these Dutch theologians was much more 
marked in Scotland than in England. 
Several causes combined to weaken the 
Calvinism of the Church of Scotland 
about the end of the seventeenth century. 
When prelacy was forced upon Scotland 

by Charles II. , many Presbyterian minis- 

10 145 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

ters were banished, and most of them 
spent the years of their exile in Holland, 
where, in spite of its condemnation by 
the Synod of Dort, Arminianism was 
rife and the Covenant Theology was at 
the height of its influence. Even after 
this period of exile was passed, it was 
customary, for a time, to send theolog- 
ical students to Holland to be educated. 
When episcopacy was finally withdrawn 
from Scotland, the taint of Arminianism 
was not withdrawn with it, and the con- 
troversy between Antinomians and Neo- 
nomians was transplanted from England. 
When the age of persecution ceased, 
with the Revolution of 1688, and the 
Church of Scotland was at peace with 
its enemies without, there began a long 
series of theological controversies within 
the church which made the eighteenth 
century a dreary and disruptive period 
for Scotch Presbyterianism. 

As the result of these influences, a 
majority of the General Assembly em- 
braced the freer views, and a proposition 

representing the strictest variety of Cal- 
146 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

vinism was voted down by the Assembly. 
Following this there came a popular 
conservative revolt. The Secession of 
1733 was, on its theological side, a coun- 
ter-reformation of Calvinism, a recon- 
struction and re-affirmation of the doc- 
trine of Predestination as interpreted by 
the English Antinomians. This contro- 
versy was well under way when there 
w^as discovered an old book which gave 
to it its name. "The Marrow of Modern 
Divinity," the work of an English "an- 
tinomian, ' ' was nearly a century old and 
had long been forgotten, when Thomas 
Boston brought it to light and made it 
the theological text -book of the Seces- 
sion. The book represented a combina- 
tion of the general position of the Cove- 
nant Theology on the dispensations, 
with the strict Calvinistic doctrine of 
irresistible grace and human impotence. 
Two of the three points at which the 
Covenant Theology had departed from 
Calvinism were therefore represented in 
Scotland at this time. The established 

church maintained, in a rather feeble 

147 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

and wavering fashion, tlie necessity of 
man's meeting certain established condi- 
tions of salvation. The Secession main- 
tained the distinction between the dis- 
pensations. But neither followed the 
method of exegesis which Cocceius had 
inaugurated, though both claimed to be 
intensely Biblical. The Secession move- 
ment is, in some respects, comparable to 
the Wesleyan revival which was contem- 
porary with it in England. The differ- 
ence between the two, as regards their 
view of the Scriptures, was exhibited in 
a conference between Whiteiield and 
Moncrieff, one of the leaders of the 
Secession, during an evangelistic tour 
by the former in Scotland. In discuss- 
ing a point of church polity, Whitefield 
dissented from an opinion which had 
been expressed. Laying his hand over 
his heart, he said with emotion, "I do 
not find it here." Moncrieff replied, as 
he slapped the Bible that lay before him, 
"But, sir, I find it here!" 

Religious thought in Scotland during 

the eighteenth century was, as has been 

148 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

shown, fhorougbly permeated with the 
principles of the Covenant Theology. 
The established church felt it only as a 
softening of the rigors of Calvinism. 
The Seceders cast their whole theology 
in the mold of the dispensations as repre- 
senting different stages of the operation 
of divine grace. The * ^Marrow of Mod- 
ern Divinity'^'' and Boston's ''^Fourfold 
State ^''^ which became as popular as 
"Pilgrim's Progress," embodied this 
conception. In the lethargy in which 
the church was steeped in the latter 
part of the eighteenth century, most of 
the positive virtues, which had marked 
the system of Cocceius and Witsius, dis- 
appeared; but the framework was still 
there, albeit much obscured, and it was 
natural that any reformatory work, 
especially one which made its appeal 
to Scripture, should proceed on that 
basis. 

The development of the Covenant 
Theology and its influence in England 
and Scotland has been dwelt upon be- 
cause it is believed that this theology 
149 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

exercised an important influence upon 
Mr. Campbell's thought. The proof of 
this proposition does not demand that 
it shall be shown that he read the orig- 
inal Latin works of the originators of 
that movement, but only that his 
thought contains elements strikingly 
similar to the earlier system, and that 
the chain of influences from it to him — 
the historic continuity, so to speak — is 
reasonably complete. 

Mr. Campbell refers occasionally in 
his works to the writings of both Coc- 
ceius and Witsius, in one case quoting 
page and particular edition in a manner 
which would indicate that the quotation 
was made at first hand from the original 
work. Boston's ' ''Fourfold State ^ ' ' which 
represented the influence of the Cove- 
nant Theology on the Seceder Presby- 
terian Church, of which Mr. Campbell 
was a member, was read during the voy- 
age which ended in the shipwreck and 
the sojourn at Glasgow. The ^^ Marrow 

of Modern Divinity^ ^ could scarcely have 
150 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

been unknown to either Thomas or Alex- 
ander Campbell. 

But aside from these particular con- 
siderations, and more conclusive than 
these scanty proofs of his acquaintance 
with this or that boak, is the fact that, 
as already shown, the Covenant Theol- 
ogy thoroughly permeated the theolog- 
ical thought of Scotland in the eight- 
eenth century and found most note- 
worthy expression in the position of the 
Seceders. It was in the air that he 
breathed. Thomas Campbell was edu- 
cated in the theological seminary of the 
Seceders and his son was well read in 
the theological literature of the time. 
To suppose that he was not acquainted 
with this phase of thought, would be to 
suppose that he was ignorant of some- 
thing which was the common property 
of the denomination with which he was 
connected. Undoubtedly Mr. Campbell 
knew the Covenant Theology as in- 
terpreted by the Seceders. Probably he 
knew it as it was taught by its Dutch 

originators. 

151 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

The claim that Alexander Campbell 
received a valuable heritage of sugges- 
tion from the Covenant Theology is 
supported by a consideration of the 
points of similiarity between the two. 

1. Both are intensely Biblical sys- 
tems. Of Cocceius, Heppe (^Dogmen des 
deutschen Protestantismus) says: "The 
fruit of his influence on the Reformed 
systematic theology, was to lead theo- 
logians back to the word of God, deliv- 
ering it from the bondage of traditional 
scholasticism." The same can be said 
of Mr. Campbell. Even his opponents 
admitted that he was learned in the 
Scriptures, and found fault only with his 
interpretations. 

2. Applying the idea of development, 
or of successive dispensations, to the in- 
terpretation of the Bible, they hold in 
common the view that the Old Testa- 
ment belongs to a former covenant 
which has passed away. It is valuable 
as a record of God-s dealing with men, 
but its commands are no longer binding. 

3. Both were reactions against simi- 

152 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

lar conditions. The Protestant scholas- 
ticism which characterized the second 
generation of Reformers, finds a close 
parallel in the state of religion in Scot- 
land and still more in the United States, 
at the beginning of the present century. 

4. Both opposed the doctrine of pre- 
destination and sovereign, irresistible 
grace, as tending to discourage human 
effort and nullify the influence of the 
appeal of the Gospel to men's accept- 
ance. 

5. Both were practical movements, 
laying stress on the conditions which 
man must meet to put himself in right 
relations with God. They aimed to re- 
lieve penitent sinners of the uncertainty 
and agony of "waiting" and "seeking," 
and gave prominence to the answer to 
the question, "What shall we do?" — the 
terms of admission to the kingdom of 
God. 

5. The two kinds of law, which 
Grotius had derived from the theory of 
the social contract, and which had a 

place in the analogous conception of re- 

153 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

ligion under the form of a covenant 
between God and man, find expression 
in Campbell's distinction between posi- 
tive and moral precepts, — a distinction 
wbicb was of importance in his teach- 
ing in regard to baptism. 

A word must be said about Mr. Camp- 
bell's attitude toward his own sources. 
It was characteristic of him that he at- 
tached little importance to the historical 
development of ideas. Although he gave 
much emphasis to the thought of the 
development of the plan of salvation in 
successive dispensations, the continuity 
of Christian thought made but slight ap- 
peal to him. There are no successive dis- 
pensations of truth within the Christian 
economy. What is true, is true; and 
what is not true, is false. That an idea, 
though not absolutely true in itself, may 
aid in the advancement of truth in other 
than a purely negative fashion, he did 
not admit. In writing of his indebted- 
ness to others for religious and theolog- 
ical ideas, he says that he was more in- 
debted to their failures than to their suc- 

154 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

cesses. As the wreck of one ship may 
warn another from a dangerous coast, so 
he admitted he had been helped by the 
mistakes of earlier theologians. He 
does not admit a large indebtedness to 
Sandeman, or Mclycan, or the Haldanes, 
from all of whom he was supposed to 
have derived much. ( Christian Baptist^ 
pp. 228, 399.) And yet again, when he 
was accused of lacking originality, he 
disclaimed any effort at originality, and 
said that he would be poor indeed if 
there were taken from him all that he 
had borrowed from his predecessors. 

In truth, Mr. Campbell was a man sin- 
gularly free from prejudice and from 
slavish dependence upon masters. He 
was committed to no fixed system. He 
was therefore free to take up any cur- 
rent idea which seemed to him true and 
useful. The conclusions of earlier think- 
ers came to him not as authorities, but as 
suggestions. He did not always appre- 
ciate how impossible it would have 
been for him to have gotten on without 

these suggestions. He says: '*I have 

155 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

endeavored to read the Scriptures as 
tbougb. no one had ever read them be- 
fore me; and I am as much on my guard 
against reading them to-day through the 
medium of my views yesterday or a 
week ago, as I am against being influ- 
enced by any foreign name, authority, 
or system whatever. ' ' To say that he did 
not construct his system as though no 
one had ever constructed a system before 
him, is only to say that he was a man 
and subject to the limitations of human 
thought. 



The consideration of the philosoph- 
ical and theological conditions of the 
eighteenth century, in the atmosphere of 
which Mr. Campbell received his train- 
ing, has led to the conclusion that, 
among the influences which determined 
the mold in which his thought was cast, 
two are pre-eminently important: 

First^ the philosophical system of 
John Locke, which, in spite of the objec- 
tionable and untenable extremes to which 

156 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

it had been developed, was still the only 
philosophical instrument at hand, deter- 
mined Mr. Campbell's view of the nature 
of man, the manner in which human 
knowledge originates and the channels 
through which any communication from 
God must be made to man. The next 
phase of modern philosophy, which Kant 
had already inaugurated as a basis, not for 
agnosticism, but for a positive reconstruc- 
tion after the destructive issue of the 
Philosophy of the Enlightenment, had 
been introduced into Bngland by Cole- 
ridge, but had as yet made little impres- 
sion on theology. 

Seco7id^ the Dutch theologians, Coc- 
ceius and Witsius, in the Covenant The- 
ology, had developed the idea of suc- 
cessive dispensations, which idea had 
been received into Scotland and was 
there current at the time when Mr. 
Campbell was receiving suggestions from 
that source. This conception assisted 
him materially in arriving at a reason- 
able method of using the Scriptures and 

in the formulation of several doctrines. 

157 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

It remains to be shown, by an exam- 
ination of bis statement of particular 
doctrines, in what respects and to what 
degree these two influences entered into 

his theological system. 
158 



Chapter IV 
The Kingdom of God 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

I. Implications of Doctrine of Covenants: 

1. Successive dispensations in the Kingdom. 

2. A contract with two sides. 

II. Sermon on the Law: 

1. All law done away, but morality remains. 

2. Gospel does what law could not do. 

3. Use of Old Testament now. 

III. EI.EMENTS OF THE KINGDOM. 

IV. Connection of the Dispensations, 

V. Four Stages of Kingdom of God: 

1. Edenic — God known by sense perception. 

2. Patriarchal — Fall limits perception. 

3. Jewish — Decalogue, the constitution or ba- 

sis of a verbal agreement. 

4. Christian — government by principles; law 

delivered at Pentecost; positive and moral 
laws; laws of naturalization and laws for 
citizens. 

VI. Happiness the Supreme Motive. 

VII. Consequences of Distinction Between 
Dispensations. 

l6o 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

In the systematizing of Mr. Camp- 
bell's doctrinal ideas, the central place 
must be given to his idea of the King- 
dom of God. Around this the other 
doctrines group themselves, and their 
relations, to it determine the form which 
they are to take. This is necessarily so 
from the character of his problem and 
the means which he adopted for its so- 
lution. The unity of the church is to 
be found by making the terms of eccle- 
siastical fellowship as nearly as possible 
coincident with the conditions of citi- 
zenship in the Kingdom of God. The 
latter are to be determined by an appeal 
to Scripture. The idea of the Kingdom 
of God thus became the center for the 
reconstruction, and the practical problem 
of unity compelled him to emphasize 
especially one phase of the Kingdom of 

II i6i 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

God, viz., the terms of admission, or the 
conditions of citizenship. 

In the formulation of this doctrine, the 
influence of the Dutch theologians is 
most strikingly apparent. There are 
two implications which go with a doc- 
trine of the covenants: Jirs^j the idea 
of successive dispensations, as being the 
stages in the history of the process of 
salvation, and therewith the sharp dis- 
tinction between the present Christian 
dispensation and the Covenant of the Law 
which has been transcended; second^ the 
conception of the relation between man 
and God as one of covenant or agree- 
ment, into which man enters voluntarily, 
by the acceptance of certain specified 
conditions on the basis of definite prom- 
ises. 

The first expression of this line of 

thought which we meet with in Mr. 

Campbell's work, was in his celebrated 

sermon on the Law, which was preached 

before the Redstone Baptist Association 

in Virginia, in 1816. It was this, more 

than anything else, which brought about 

162 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

the charges of heresy against him from 
his Baptist brethren, and which finally 
led to his separation from that com- 
munion. The substance of the sermon, 
which presented the fundamental idea in 
some of its practical bearings, is as fol- 
lows: The Law, which is done away, 
is the whole Mosaic dispensation, includ- 
ing judicial and moral as well as cere- 
monial legislation. The whole system 
was intended to subserve a temporary 
end and, that end having been accom- 
plished, the system has been abrogated 
by the appearance of the Christian dis- 
pensation. 

But by including the moral law in that 
which was done away, the basis of mor- 
ality is not overthrown, for morality 
rests upon a deeper and more enduring 
foundation than the Mosaic Covenant. 
In the overthrov/ of the Law, there are 
two commandments which stand fast be- 
cause they are constitutive principles of 
all morals and all religion: "Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God, with all thy 

heart, soul, mind and strength; and thy 

163 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

neighbor as thyself." These are per- 
manent, while all the rest are transient. 
There are certain things which the 
Law was not able to do. It could not 
give righteousness, and therefore it could 
not give life; it could not show the enor- 
mity of sin, in all its fulness; it could 
not give a suitable rule of life for im- 
perfect humanity, so it gave a partial 
rule to a part of humanity — the Jewish 
race. These defects are remedied under 
the Gospel, which completely took the 
place of the Law. From this relation of 
the two dispensations, there follow cer- 
tain conclusions: (a) The essential dif- 
ference between Law and Gospel, (b) 
That Christians are not under the Law 
or any part of it, and that the removal 
of the binding force of the moral portion 
of the Mosaic code does not leave us 
Antinomians. (c) That it is useless to 
preach the Law to prepare people for 
the Gospel, (d) That arguments can- 
not be drawn from the Old Testament, 
in support of any forms, practices or 

ordinances in the Christian Church. 
164 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

This sermon gave a practical and pop- 
ular presentation of his view of the rela- 
tion of the Covenants in its bearings on 
the religious life and practice of the 
times. The subject is treated more elab- 
orately and more sy-stematically in a 
series of articles in the Christian Bap- 
tist^ in the treatise on Christian Baptism 
and in the Christian System. 

The divine government in its succes- 
sive forms is always a monarchy, never 
a republic. Monarchy is said to be the 
natural form of government, an organ- 
ism with one head, whereas republics 
are useful only because of the degen- 
eracy of man and the impossibility of 
getting a good ruler who will not be 
corrupted by power. Again monarchy 
is better suited for efficient action in a 
state of war, and it is a state of war in 
the moral universe which the Kingdom 
of God is designed to meet. 

In a kingdom there are five elements: 

constitution, king, subjects, laws and 

territory. The Jewish and Christian 

systems have all of these. They are 

165 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

constitutional monarchies, because God's 
relation with fallen man, whereby he 
seeks to redeem him, is in the form 
of a compact, with mutual promises. 
This has always been so since man fell 
and God began to try to reclaim him. 
The demands v/hich are made upon 
man and the promises which are made 
to him, vary with the development of 
his needs and capabilities. 

The promises which were made to 
Abraham, included the prophecy of the 
two dispensations which were to follow. 
*'I will make of thee a great nation," 
refers to the Jewish Covenant whereby 
God entered into special relations with 
the Hebrew people. "In thy seed shall 
all the nations of the earth be blessed," 
points to the Christian dispensation and 
its universal character. There is seen 
to be, therefore, a connection between 
the covenants, in that one leads up to 
the others and that the second and third 
are prophesied in the first. The prom- 
ise which went with the covenant to 

Abraham was that the land of Canaan 

i66 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

should be given as an inheritance to the 
nation which was to be. To fulfill this 
promise of the land, the second covenant 
became necessary when Israel as a nation 
left Egypt. 

The Jewish dispensation was based 
upon a political, moral, and religious 
constitution. Its institutions, also, fore- 
shadowed the spiritual truths of the 
coming Christian dispensation, and the 
complete fulfillment of the promise 
made to Abraham by blessing all the 
nations of the earth in his seed. "Every 
one who would accurately understand 
the Christian institution, must approach 
it through the Mosaic; and he who would 
be proficient in the Jewish, must make 
Paul his commentator. ' ' In view of such 
statements as these — and there are many 
of them — it cannot be said that Mr. 
Campbell belittled, much less rejected, 
the Old Testament, as he was frequently 
accused of doing. 

The development of the plan of salva- 
tion is set forth in four different stages, 

but there are other minor subdivisions, 

167 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

nine in all, — as with Witsius. Of the 
four, the first is the primitive state of 
Edenic innocence. Here man, as 3^et 
nnmarred by sin, sees and hears God 
immediately, with no need for a special 
revelation. God and man are inhabit- 
ants of the same world and their rela- 
tions are too intimate to need any spe- 
cial manifestation. In the Fall occurs 
the separation. Man loses, in a meas- 
ure, his God-like image, can no longer 
perceive God directly by sight and hear- 
ing, and no longer has even a correct 
idea of Him. They now live in sepa- 
rate spheres. The first man born after 
the Fall was the man of Locke's psychol- 
ogy, knowing the natural world through 
sensation and nothing more. Even in 
the paradisiacal state, the knowing 
faculty of man was constructed on Lock- 
ian principles. All knowledge, even 
then, was in a sensible form, but the 
senses were such that they could re- 
ceive impressions from spiritual realities. 
The effect of the Fall is to limit the 

sphere in which the senses can act, and 
i68 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

to limit man's knowledge to the natural 
world. Revelation now becomes neces- 
sary, and with that begins a new chap- 
ter in the history of man. 

With the earlier exponents of the Cov- 
enant Theology, the -line of cleavage at 
the Fall was made the most important 
in the whole history of salvation, be- 
cause the idea of original sin, as some- 
thing demanding an explanation, was 
constantly in their minds. With Mr. 
Campbell, on the contrary, this idea had 
a very unimportant place, and the Fall 
was accordingly relegated to a relatively 
subordinate place. Whatever impor- 
tance it had, came rather from the Lock- 
ian limitation of man's knowing powers, 
than from the idea of original sin. Or 
perhaps it might be sufficient to say that 
original sin, in its Lockian interpreta- 
tion, meant the narrowing of the field of 
sensible knowledge. Original sin be- 
comes therefore an inherited and per- 
petual limitation of man's power of per- 
ception, instead of an inherited and 

perpetual guilt. 

169 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

The patriarchal age, extending from 
Adam to Moses, was the period in which 
the family relation was conspicuous, be- 
cause at this time the family, or the 
tribe, was the highest social unit. The 
recognition of the development of the 
knowledge of God and the growing in- 
timacy between man and God through 
successive revelations through this age, 
makes it apparent that the religious truth 
of a single dispensation is not conceived to 
be all delivered, necessarily, as a deposit 
at the beginning of the dispensation. 
Thus the religious institutions of the 
patriarchal age, while suited to the in- 
fancy of the race, show a constant devel- 
opment. The altar of sacrifice was the 
most significant institution of the ante- 
diluvian world. Religious regard was 
paid to the seventh day. The priest- 
hood developed as there was need of it, 
the head of each family acting, at first, 
as his own priest. The idea of the sep- 
aration between clean and unclean 
beasts, as having significance for relig- 
ious rites, also "got abroad before the 
170 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

flood." It is not to be understood that 
man by natural processes develops these 
ideas, for he is incapable of such knowl- 
edge, but that God revealed them to 
him gradually. So the covenant of 
each succeeding dispensation was of the 
nature of a codification of the religious 
ideas which had been revealed, one at a 
time, during the preceding age. This 
was especially true during the patri- 
archal dispensation. It was less so dur- 
ing the JewivSh, and in the Christian dis- 
pensation all is fixed and complete at 
the beginning. The religion of the 
pagan nations was supposed to have 
been derived from the revelations of 
Jehovah in this age. 

Th.^ Jewish dispensation is the period 
of national religion. Here God assumes 
the relation of kingship over a single 
nation because the national life was now 
beginning to rise into prominence. 
There is a distinct break in the conti- 
nuity of the development here when God 
organizes and leads forth Israel out of 

Egypt and becomes its national God. 

171 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELLS THEOLOGY 

The kingship is distinctly a new rela- 
tion, and the preliminaries of it are 
announced with many signs of the pres- 
ence and power of God. "They see 
and hear what they never heard or saw 
before." The revelation, it will be ob- 
served, again comes in the form of see- 
ing and hearing, — an extension of sense- 
perception beyond its ordinary limits. 
The first requisite in the new relation 
between God and men, that of king and 
subject, was a constitution or covenant. 
This was provided in an agreement be- 
tween God and the people, the terms of 
which were pronounced by God in words 
audible to two million people, and ac- 
cepted by them by general vote. (From 
this fact the universal right of suffrage 
is deduced as a natural right.) This 
contract was an agreement between the 
governor and the governed, analogous to 
that whereby, according to the social 
contract theory, the state was origin- 
ated throuo^h an ag^reement between 
king and people. But since God stands 

in a unique position as king, he alone 

172 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

has the right to determine the terms of 
the contract and to submit them for 
acceptance. The constitution or cove- 
nant, in this case, was the Decalogue, 
which was distinguished accordingly 
from all the other laws of Israel. God 
agreed to protect them so long as they 
obeyed it. Disobedience of the other 
laws is never punished so severely as 
failure to observe this. To transgress 
the ceremonial law is a misdemeanor; 
but to disregard this written constitu- 
tion, the Decalogue, is considered equiv- 
alent to treason. 

The Jewish worship was symbolic, 
looking forward to the truths of the 
Christian dispensation. The promises 
and curses of the Jewish covenant did 
not look beyond the present life, 
*' Moses, in his five books, has not a 
word to say about the future life. ' ' The 
blessings promised to those who keep 
the covenant are temporal prosperity, 
long life, and national success. So the 
Jewish dispensation was not intended so 
much to effect the eternal salvation of 

173 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

those under it, as to preserve the knowl- 
edge of the character of God, to exhibit 
His virtues and to show the advantages 
of serving Him. The distinction be- 
tween the purpose of the Jewish system 
and of the Christian system is seen in 
this fact, as well as in the fact that the 
Jewish covenant was intended primarily 
only for Israel. It accepted, but did 
not encourage, proselytes, and its code 
of laws did not include the command 
*'Go, preach." Although the develop- 
ment of religious truth and progressive 
character of revelation within each dis- 
pensation is asserted, yet Mr. Camp- 
bell says that the ' ' prophets added 
nothing to the law of Moses." There 
was, therefore, no real advance in relig- 
ious knowledge, during this period. 

The Christian dispensation is distin- 
guished by the idea of the blotting out 
of sins, followed by the joy and peace of 
forgiveness. The joy of Christian expe- 
rience is the result which follows en- 
trance to the kingdom, and must not be 

regarded as the criterion of fitness for 
174 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

admission. The new dispensation differs 
from tlie old in being a government of 
principles, not of precepts. The religion 
of Israel was delivered in a series of de- 
tailed and specific commands, includ- 
ing a catalogue of religious, moral and 
ceremonial duties. In the new dispen- 
sation there is no authoritative ritual, 
liturgy or manual. Its supreme law is 
love. The idea of a covenant, wherein 
each party makes certain concessions 
and secures certain privileges, is con- 
spicuously present. The king, Christ, 
has received these privileges: he is to be 
the Oracle of God, to have the disposal 
of the Holy Spirit, to be prophet and 
high priest and supreme law-giver over 
all the earth. The subjects of the king- 
dom, in return for their allegiance, re- 
ceive the promised protection of their 
constitutional king. They are pardoned, 
justified, saved from sin, are adopted 
into the family of God, are given the 
means of knowing God, and receive the 
promise of resurrection and eternal life 

and blessedness. The laws of the king- 

175 



THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE 

dom were not delivered until the king- 
dom had been set up, i, e. , at Pentecost. 
So the laws must be looked for in the 
records after that time, in the Acts and 
in the Epistles, just as the laws under 
the Jewish covenant are to be looked for 
in the books treating of the time after 
Sinai, not in Genesis. 

The laws of the kingdom may be di- 
vided into two classes, positive and 
moral; or again, by another two-fold 
division into laws of naturalization, and 
laws for the citizens. The laws of nat- 
uralization constitute the conditions with 
which aliens must comply in seeking 
admission. The first step is to submit 
to them the constitution, i. e. , to preach 
the Gospel. When they understand it, 
believe and desire to accept, they may be 
admitted in the prescribed way — by be- 
ing born of water and of the Spirit. 
These, together, constitute the condi- 
tion of entrance into the Kingdom of 
God, elsewhere defined more particular- 
ly as faith, repentance and baptism. 
176 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

Here, in Mr. Campbell's thought, the 
chief emphasis was laid. 

Besides these positive laws touching 
the requirements for admission to mem- 
bership, there are two other positive 
laws which apply to the citizens of the 
kingdom, viz., the weekly celebration of 
the death and resurrection of Christ in 
the lyord's Supper, and the meeting on 
the first day of every week for this cele- 
bration and for edification. All the 
other laws of the kingdom are moral, i. 
^., such as must be approved by the en- 
lightened conscience of man. 

Faith is the principle by which the 

believer comes into possession of the 

spiritual blessing, but the necessary 

means of spiritual enjoyment are the 

ordinances. Just as nothing is known 

or enjoyed in the natural world except 

through the senses, so nothing is enjoyed 

in the spiritual world, except through 

faith. Here again, faith appears as an 

extension of sensation in a higher 

sphere, and the process of spiritual 

knowledge and enjoyment is interpreted 
12 177 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

on the basis of the lyockian theory of 
natural knowledge. However much em- 
phasis may be laid upon the terms of ad- 
mission into the kingdom, these are not 
the consummation, but merely the pre- 
paratory steps. They constitute the 
gate into the kingdom of favor. The 
joys of that kingdom are received only 
through the ordinances, such as the 
preaching of the Gospel, the reading of 
the Scriptures, the observance of the 
Lord's Day, the Lord's Supper, prayer, 
etc. 

As growing out of this conception of 
faith as an extension of sensational 
knowledge, we have naturally a eudse- 
monistic philosophy of religion. The 
covenants are the way by which man 
gets into relation to God. But why 
should man want to get into relation 
with God? The motive assigned is that 
his highest pleasure lies there. There 
is a clear recognition of the qualitative 
difference between various pleasures, so 
that the pleasures of religion are not put 

on a par with the pleasures of sensual 
17S 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

indulgence, but the motive after all is 
pleasure. "From the plan of the Bible, 
as well as from its philosophy, its claims 
upon the faith and admiration of man- 
kind may be strongly argued: its philos- 
ophy is, that without -piety no man can 
be happy; and that with it, any man, in 
any outward circumstances, may be 
happy to the full extent of his capacity 
for human enjoyment. All human en- 
joyments are reduced to two classes; one 
is spiritual and the other is carnal; the 
one is moral, social and refined, and the 
other is selfish, exclusive and gross; the 
one rises, the other sinks through all 
eternity. The philosophy of the Bible 
is, therefore, the philosophy of human 
happiness, the only philosophy which 
commends itself to the cultivated under- 
standing of man." This idea of a noble, 
unselfish social happiness, from spiritual 
and intellectual sources, as the prime 
motive to action, is closely akin to the 
thought of some of the best of the eth- 
ical writers of the eighteenth century, 

especially Shaftesbury. 

179 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

Among the most important conse- 
quences of the clear distinction of the 
different dispensations in Mr. Campbell's 
thought, may be mentioned the follow- 
ing: 

1. Baptism is not a substitute for cir- 
cumcision, and likewise the whole list 
of pedobaptist arguments derived from 
the Old Testament are fallacious and 
inconsequential. 

2. The Lord's Day is not a substitute 
for the Sabbath, is not to be observed as 
the Sabbath was observed or because it 
is commanded in the Decalogue. 

3. The Christian ministry is in no 
sense a substitute for the Jewish priest- 
hood, that function being now per- 
formed by Christ as High Priest, and by 
all believers as priests. 

4. Morality is not based on the com- 
mands of the Decalogue, but on the 
moral laws of the Christian dispensa- 
tion. 

The other doctrines evidently fit into 
this view of the Kingdom of God as 

a framework, somewhat as follows: The 

180 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

authority of Scripture is the objective 
source and criterion of all our ideas con- 
cerning God and his relations with men, 
and therefore concerning the Kingdom of 
God, its terms of admission and duties 
of membership. Faith, repentance and 
baptism are the naturalization laws, by 
conformity to which aliens are admitted 
to enjoy the privileges of citizenship in 
the kingdom. Conversion and regener- 
ation are the change of ' state which 
takes place when the individual changes 
his relationship to God by entering the 
kingdom according to these provisions. 
The Kingdom of God is a perpetual 
institution, but its specific requirements 
change with successive dispensations. 
God's purpose toward men is eternal, as 
Calvin had held, and this is shown in 
the fact that there has always been some 
way by which man could come to God. 
But the history of the process of salva- 
tion shows a succession of covenants 
under which the conditions of citizen- 
ship have varied. The protest made by 
Mr. Campbell upon this basis against 

i8i 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

the indiscriminate use of the two Testa- 
ments as equally binding authorities for 
Christian doctrine and Christian prac- 
tice, is quite parallel to the protest made 
by Cocceius and his followers against the 
similar method which was employed by 
scholastic Calvinism in his day. We 
live not only under the Kingdom of God, 
but under a particular dispensation of 
that kingdom, and our duties toward it 
are comprised only within the covenant 
of our own dispensation. The records 
of earlier covenants may be instructive, 
but only those of our own give the con- 
ditions of salvation — z. e.^ of entrance 

into the kingdom — -for us, 

182 



Chapter V 
Authority and Inspiration 



AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION. 

I. A BiBi^iCAi, Movement. 

II. The; Skat o^ Authority: 

1. Knowledge of God only through Revelation. 

2. Revelation only through the written Word. 

III. Method of Inspiration: 

1. Sensationalism supports verbal inspiration. 

2. Two-fold division of Scripture. 

IV. Criterion oe Revei/ATion. 

V. Ruizes oe Interpretation: 

1. Distinction between covenants. 

2. Baconian empiricism. 

VI. The Nature oe the Authority: 

1. Bible as a law-book. 

2. Authority for doctrine and polity. 

3. Return to external authority for principle 

of unity. 

4. Comparison and contrast with Oxford Move- 

ment. 

184 



AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION. 

The idea of the Kingdom of God em- 
bodies the conception of man's highest 
possible development and most complete 
happiness as consisting in relationship 
to God, through citizenship in His king- 
dom. The first inquir}^ which arises 
naturally relates to the source from 
which are derived the ideas of God and 
of a relationship wnth him, i. e.^ the 
source of religious ideas and the seat of 
authority. With Alexander Campbell, 
this amounts to a study of the authority 
and inspiration of the Scriptures. 

Theoretically there was nothing new 
in the acceptance of the Scriptures as 
the sole source and the objective cri- 
terion of religious truth. This was 
the principle of Protestantism, formu- 
lated by Chillingworth in his famous 
motto, "The Bible and the Bible alone 

is the religion of Protestants." Never- 

185 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

theless this principle had repeatedly 
suffered obscuration, when the right of 
private judgment in interpretation fell 
into desuetude, and from time to time 
needed to be rediscovered and given a 
new emphasis. So it was when Coc- 
ceius effected a Biblical revival by his 
new method of exegesis. So Locke, in 
his religious writings, had endeavored to 
bring about a return to Biblical Chris- 
tianity. His ''Reasonableness of Chris- 
tianity as delivered in the Scriptures" 
was intended to clear away the rubbish 
of the current theological systems which 
were inherited from the past and could 
not be proved from the Word of God, 
just as his "Essay on the Human Un- 
derstanding" aimed to clear away the 
metaphysical lumber of the schools. It 
was a somewhat similar condition of 
affairs which confronted Mr. Campbell, 
both in Scotland, where he received his 
first impulse, and in the United States, 
where the problem was worked out. In 
his mind, the revival of Biblical Chris- 
tianity took the form of a readjustment 
1 86 



AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 

of the conditions of Church membership 
to meet the Scriptural requirements. 

The pre-eminent position given to the 
Bible in Mr. Campbell's thought is log- 
ically connected with his conception of 
human knowledge and man's absolute 
dependence upon revelation for knowl- 
edge of God and spiritual things. It is 
absolutely necessary that there shall be 
a revealed rule for religion, because man, 
by himself, is completely incapable of 
knowing God. "There is not a spiritual 
idea in the whole human race which is 
not drawn from the Bible." (^Christian 
System^ p. 15.) Again, in beginning a 
discussion of the Holy Spirit ( Christian 
Baptist^ p. 82), he starts with the prop- 
osition that all knowledge of God or of 
the invisible world of spirit is derived 
immediately from the Spirit of God 
which "dictated" the Scriptures. All 
that heathen philosophers and pagan 
religionists have known about God, 
every idea of even the existence of a 
God, is dependent in some way upon the 

revelation in the Bible, and, if our his- 
i87 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

torical knowledge were complete, could 
be traced back, step by step, to that 
source. The tremendous historical as- 
sumption which this involves, is unhesi- 
tatingly made for the sake of maintain- 
ing the Lockian limitation of natural 
knowledge, which was conceived as 
magnifying the authority of the Bible. 
Skeptics, likewise, who attack the 
tenets of positive religion, are attacking 
something of which they have abso- 
lutely no knowledge except through the 
one source which they repudiate. He 
says: *'Were it our design, we could 
easily prove, upon the principles of all 
modern skeptics, that, unaided by the 
oracles of the Spirit they could never 
have known that there is a God, that 
there was a creation or a Creator, or that 
there is within them a spark of life 
superior to that of a brute." It can be 
shown with ''demonstrable certainty" 
that "on the acknowledged principles of 
Locke, the Christian philosopher, and of 
Hume, the subtle skeptic, all the boasted 

intelligence of the Deistical world is a 

i8S 



AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 

plagiarism from the oracles of the Divine 
One." 

This point, the limitation of man's 
natural knowledge to things of sense, 
and his absolute dependence upon reve- 
lation for anything higher, is one of 
Campbell's most characteristically Lock- 
ian positions. But here is an instance 
of the logical development of lyocke's 
principles beyond the conclusions which 
he himself derived from them. Locke 
had held that knowledge of God was 
demonstrable. But he accounted for it 
only by slipping in between the various 
ideas from sensation, surreptitiously, as 
it were, certain intuitions which, added 
up, amounted to a demonstration. These 
intuitions, as his followers with their 
more rigid logic soon saw, had no place 
in the sensational theory of knowledge. 
The logical character of Hume's agnos- 
tic deduction is inexorable. 

Mr. Campbell accepts the results of 

this negative reasoning so far as the un- 

i aided human intellect is concerned, and 

admits, with the most atheistic, that the 
189 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

natural reason can never know God, or 
even have any idea of his existence. He 
uses the Lockian argument in proof of 
this, that children are not born with the 
idea of God and hence that idea cannot 
be innate. His acceptance of the log- 
ical character of the skeptical reasoning 
was shown in a correspondence with the 
IVew Harinony Gazette^ a paper pub- 
lished in the interests of Robert Owen's 
society of communistic infidels, at New 
Harmony, Ohio. Mr. Campbell pro- 
posed three questions in regard to the 
existence of God, the soul and immor- 
tality. The questions were answered 
agnostically: we can know nothing 
about such existences, because they 
can never be cognizable by the senses of 
man. This answer Mr. Campbell ap- 
proved as being sound philosophy, so far 
as philosophy can go. "There can be 
no stopping place between deism and 
atheism. I give great praise to the 
New Harmony philosophers for their 
candor and honesty in avowing the con- 
clusion which all the lights they have, 

190 



AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 

authorized them to maintain. I say 
they are good philosophers. They have 
reasoned well." 

But this line of argument is made 
only the introduction to a further step. 
Granted that we can have no natural 
knowledge or idea of God, it is never- 
theless true that we actually do have 
such an idea. Our ideas of spiritual 
things are facts to be explained. They 
must have a cause and that cause, since 
it cannot be the natural reason, must be 
divine revelation. (Compare Descartes 's 
Anthropological proof of the existence of 
God, in the Third Meditation; to which 
Campbell adds Locke's sensationalism 
to make an argument for the sole author- 
ity of the Scriptures in spiritual things.) 
"Indeed it all comes to this: if there be 
no innate ideas, as these philosophers 
teach, then the Bible is proved, from the 
principles of reason and from the history 
of the world, to be what it purports, a 
volume indited by the Spirit of the in- 
visible God." The same argument 

which proves that the Bible is a divine 

191 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

revelation, because it contains ideas 
which could come from no other source, 
proves also that the Bible is the only 
channel through which we receive 
knowledge of spiritual things. 

The same Lockian conception of 
knowledge which determined that man 
must be dependent upon something out- 
side of himself for all ideas which be- 
long in a sphere beyond the reach of his 
sensations, determines also that revela- 
tion can come only through the channels 
of the senses. It would not be a reve- 
lation to man if it were not a revelation 
in a form in which it is intelligible to 
man. Revelation does not revolutionize 
man's processes of knowledge, but ex- 
tends them. So all revelation of the 
character and w411 of God, makes its ap- 
peal to the human understanding, /. e. , 
to the intellect, through the forms of 
sense perception. This precludes the 
idea of a mystical or emotional revela- 
tion which might be independent of the 
written Word. The argument on the 

Ivockian basis results, therefore, in the 

192 



AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 

conclusion of tlie absolute dependence of 
man upon the revelation contained in 
the Scriptures for all his spiritual ideas, 
and the consequent fallacy of natural re- 
ligion and the impotence and vanity of 
human authority in religious matters. 

Man gets truth through the intellect 
just as surely as light through the eyes, 
and only so. Revelation is conceived of 
as essentially and exclusively a matter of 
knowledge, not a matter of emotions, 
impulses, stimuli. Hence we have the 
conception of communication between 
God and man defined and limited by 
those two lyockian conceptions. First ^ 
any communication addressed to man 
must be in terms of knowledge and must 
make its entrance through the gate of 
the intellect; for ideas are with Locke 
the universal thing, and emotions can be 
conveyed from man to man only when 
worked up into the form of intellectual 
concepts. This excludes all mystical 
ideas of communion between God and 
man on a purely emotional and experi- 
ential basis. Second^ man's intellect is 
13 193 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

of such a sort, being wholly dependent 
upon the material supplied by the senses, 
that it could never attain to the appre- 
hension of any spiritual idea. Communi- 
cation with God being therefore limited 
to intellectual apprehension, and the 
knowing power being limited by the 
senses, it follows that all communication 
with God is limited to the one medium, 
the Book, which the senses can grasp as 
a concrete object of sensible experience. 
The Book becomes the sole and absolute 
religious authority. Intellectualism and 
sensationalism are therefore the philo- 
sophical basis of the view that revelation 
is only through the Word. Campbell's 
belief that knowledge of God comes to 
man only through the revelation con- 
tained in the Bible, is therefore a con- 
sistent conclusion from Locke's theory 
of knowledge, but it is far from being in 
agreement with Locke's own conclusion 
on the subject, as expressed in the fol- 
lowing words written in 1681 (Bourne's 

Life of Locke ^ p. 462): 

194 



AUTHORITY AXD IXSPIRATION 

"That there is a G-od and what that God is, noth- 
ing can discover in us, nor judge in us, but natural 
reason. For whatever discovery we receive any 
other way, must come originally from inspiration, 
which is an opinion or persuasion of the mind 
whereof a man knows not the use or reason, but is 
received there as a truth coming from an unknown 
and therefore a supernatural cause. But no such 
inspiration concerning God, or his worship, can be 
admitted for truth by him that thinks himself in- 
spired, much less by any other whom he would per- 
suade to believe him inspired, any further than it is 
conformable to reason; because where reason is not, 
I judge it is impossible for a man himself to dis- 
tinguish betwixt inspiration and fancy, truth and 
error, — since nobody can doubt, from the contradic- 
tion and strangeness of opinion concerning God 
and religion in this world, that men are likely to 
have more frenzies than inspirations. Inspiration 
then, barely in itself, cannot be a ground to receive 
any doctrine not conformable to reason." 

The comparison of these statements 
with the view of Mr. Campbell that man 
by his natural reason can not have the 
slightest conception of God, will free 
him from any suspicion of having taken 
his views from Locke. It is quite a dif- 
ferent thing to say that their philosoph- 
ical basis was Lockian. The fact is 

that Locke's views of the natural reason 
195 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

as an instrument for knowing God, 
were not consistent with the fundamental 
principles of his philosophy. The devel- 
opment of philosophical thought from 
Locke to Hume showed that, and Mr. 
Campbell profited by that history. In 
his method of accounting for man's 
knowledge of God, Campbell was a bet- 
ter Lockian than Locke himself. 

So far the discussion has related sole- 
ly to the means of communication be- 
tween God and the individual of to-day, 
and that is found to be entirely through 
the Book. But the Book itself was given 
through human agency. It was written 
by human penmen. It remains to be 
considered what was the nature of the 
communication between God and the in- 
spired men who indited the sacred 
volume; in other words. What was the 
nature and method of revelation? 

What has preceded obviously excludes 
the assumption that the divine communi- 
cation to the inspired writers was in any 
way analogous to the relation between 

God and the ordinary Christian, for the 
196 



AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 

latter is solely through the medium 
which the former produced. It there- 
fore cannot be said that the inspiration 
of the writers was the same in kind as 
that which may be enjoyed by Christians 
to-day, only more intense in degree. But 
the inspired men were still men, — crea- 
tures who can receive communications 
only through the experience of the 
senses. Again the statement is signifi- 
cant that "revelation does not revolu- 
tionize man's processes of knowledge, but 
only extends them," i. e.^ brings new 
elements into the world of sensible expe- 
rience. With the Christian of to-day, 
the new element of sense experience is 
the Bible. The men who were inspired 
to write the Bible must have received 
direct from God some other kind of rev- 
elation to the senses. Revelation could 
only take place through sights and 
sounds. Since revelation is essentially 
the deliverance of ideas to men, and 
since a word is the sensible body of an 
idea, it may be said that Lockian sensa- 
tionalism gives the philosophical basis 

197 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

for the doctrine of verbal inspiration. 
This is the position, then, to which Mr. 
Campbell's philosophical presupposition 
logically led. Did he actually hold it? 

It may be said without doing him in- 
justice — in fact, it must be said to avoid 
doing him injustice-^that all of his 
declarations on the subject cannot be 
combined into a single systematic and 
consistent theory. There are man}^ 
passages in Mr. Campbell's writings 
w^hich look in the direction of verbal in- 
spiration, if indeed they do not directly 
affirm it. He speaks of the writers of 
Scripture as "penmen" (^Christian Bap- 
tist^ p. 200). He refers to the Holy 
Spirit as having "dictated" and "in- 
dited" the book. In regard to the 
means by which God has communicated 
with men in times past, he says that 
God spoke vive voce with Adam in the 
Garden and with Moses on Sinai. God 
taught the first man the use of speech 
by talking to him audibly. ( CJiT-istian 
Baptist^ p. 37.) The words of Newton 

are quoted approvingly, "God gave man 

198 



AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 

reason and religion by giving him the 
use of words." "When God spoke to 
man in his own language, he spoke as 
one person converses with another, — in 
the fair, stipulated and well-established 
meaning of the terms.." ( Christian Sys- 
tem^ p. i6.) Word and idea are con- 
ceived by Campbell, as by Locke, to be 
so inseparably connected that an idea 
cannot be said to exist without a word 
to represent it; much less can it be com- 
municated without the use of the word 
which is the necessary means of making 
the requisite impression on the senses of 
the recipient. (^Christian System^ p. 23.) 
Hence revelation could not have come 
to the inspired writers without spoken 
words, any more than it can be com- 
municated to men to-day by any other 
means than the written words of the 
record. The Spirit, in giving ideas to 
the writers, necessarily gave the words 
corresponding to them. 

It is characteristic of Mr. Campbell's 
habit of mind that the question of the 

method of inspiration presented no diffi- 
199 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

culties to him. Replying to a question 
as to how far the writers were indebted 
to the Spirit for the very words which 
they used, he says: "The burden of 
this query has occasioned considerable 
discussion amongst the more learned 
commentators and interpreters of Sacred 
Scripture. I cannot, however, discover 
any real difficulty in deciding the con- 
troversy or in answering the query." 
He then makes a twofold classification 
of Scripture into: Jirsf^ accounts of things 
purely supernatural, including all relig- 
ious teaching and laws; and second^ 
records of natural, historical occur- 
rences. In the first class, "the com- 
munication was made in words." In 
the second, the Spirit simply strength- 
ened the memory, guided in the choice 
of documents and sources, and guar- 
anteed the absolute accuracy of the 
account, but left the choice of words to 
the writer. 

The use of this twofold division was 
convenient as affording a way of main- 
taining the complete inerrancy of the 

200 



AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 

Bible in all its parts, without holding 
the implausible theory that the Holy 
Spirit dictated accounts of events which 
men could write about quite accurately 
on the basis of their own recollections 
and available historical documents. The 
convenience of the division had brought 
it into use soon after the Protestant 
Reformation and almost as soon as em- 
phasis began to be thrown upon the 
authority of Scripture. But it is a difH- 
cult theory to maintain on the basis of 
Locke's sensationalism, for on that the- 
ory of knowledge it is impossible for the 
Spirit to exercise any general oversight, 
such as ' 'strengthening the memory," 
guarding against errors, etc., without 
conversing orally with the writer, which 
would amount to giving him a verbal 
revelation. Of course if he preferred to 
use his own words instead of those in 
which the Spirit spoke to him, it would 
be possible to do so; but it can scarcely 
be doubted that those who have held 
this theory, and Mr. Campbell among 
them, did not conceive of the Spirit as 

201 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

giving verbal suggestions, warnings, re- 
minders and corrections to the writers, 
but ratber as exercising some undefined 
strengthening influence. A strict ad- 
herence to the logical outcome of sen- 
sationalism would have led to a view 
too rigid to have been either plausible or 
endurable; so he adopted a view which 
had much to recommend it, but which 
was not entirely in harmony with the 
philosophical basis. 

As an off-set to the above quotations 
which appear to teach plenary verbal 
inspiration, the following may be cited 
(^Christian Baptist^ p. 344): "I do not 
believe that the book commonly called 
the Bible is properly denominated a 
divine revelation, or communication 
from, the Deity to the human race. At 
the same time I am convinced that in 
this volume there are revelations or 
communications from the Deity to 
man." It will be noted that this is not 
unlike the current phrase that "the 
Bible is not the Word of God, but con- 
tains the Word of God." 

202 



AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 

The question of the criterion of reve- 
lation is well summed up in a single 
sentence (^Christian Baptist^ p. 546): 
"We have a right to sit in judgment 
over the credentials of Heaven's ambas- 
sador, but we have no right to sit in 
judgment over the information he gives 
us." It is the province of human reason 
to determine whether what claims to be 
divine revelation really bears the marks 
of its divine origin. The messages of 
Jesus''and of certain of the prophets were 
proven to be divine by their miracles, 
and the well attested accounts of these 
miracles are the chief evidence to-day of 
the reality of the revelation which ac- 
companied them. The criterion is based 
entirely on the senses. The miracles 
appeal to the senses and can therefore 
have weight with the reason. The rev- 
elation itself pertains to a realm of which 
the senses cannot take cognizance, and 
therefore it cannot be tested by its con- 
formity to human reason. The test of 
divine revelation is not in its effects; it 

is not internal to man, but external. 

203 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

Coleridge made the supreme test of re- 
ligion internal. ^'I accept the Bible as 
divine because it finds me. . . It is 
inspired because it inspires. '^ 

The Rules for Interpretation, which 
Mr. Campbell laid down ( Christian Sys- 
tem^ p. i6), exhibit two influences. 
First^ the distinction between the cove- 
nants leads to a consequent discrimina- 
tion in the use of the documents of the 
different dispensations. This Tvas per- 
haps his most important exegetical prin- 
ciple, and its connection with the work 
of Cocceius has already been pointed 
out. Second^ the common-sense empir- 
ical method, which Bacon applied to 
science and Locke to philosophy, is 
reflected in those rules which look to 
careful observation of the original mean- 
ing of each word, the noting of the 
time, place, circumstances, and purpose 
of each utterance. These rules, simple 
and obvious as they are, are nothing less 
than an application of the Baconian 
method of observation and deduction to 

the interpretation of the Bible. Every 
204 



AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 

verse, every statement of fact in the 
record, is to be considered as a scientific 
phenomenon. It is to be observed as 
Bacon observed the facts of nature, and 
from this mass of particular instances, 
gathered by the empirical method, are 
to be deduced the general truths of relig- 
ion and the laws of the church. 

The truths thus deduced from the 
New Testament are the sole authority 
for Christian doctrine, and the precepts 
of the apostles and the precedent of the 
Apostolic church are the authority for 
polity. But all sects pretend to draw 
their opposing views from the Bible. 
The trouble, says Mr. Campbell, arises 
because they do not state the doctrines 
in the language of Scripture. "Now, 
suppose that all these would abandon 
every word and sentence not found in 
the Bible and, without explanation, lim- 
itation or enlargement, quote with equal 
pleasure and readiness and apply on 
every suitable occasion every word and 
sentence found in the volume; how long 

would divisions exist? It would be im- 

205 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

possible to perpetuate them on this 
plan." And again: ''On the subject of 
religion I am fully persuaded that noth- 
ing but the inspired Scriptures ought 
ever to have been published. ' ' ( Chris- 
tia7i Baptist^ p. 259). 

This language, if its force were not 
modified by Mr. Campbell's own prac- 
tice, would indicate that the Bible is an 
authority to be quoted merely and not 
interpreted, and the application of this 
method would lay an embargo upon all 
theological thought. And this would 
be consistent, too, with the theory of 
knowledge v/hich limits the scope of 
man's rational powers to things perceiv- 
able by the senses. 

As the text of the New Testament is 
the absolute authority for doctrine, so 
the precedent of the Apostolic church is 
a law to the church for polity and wor- 
ship. Since the primitive order is 
authoritative, the need of the church is 
for "a restoration of the Ancient Order 

of Things." The religion of Christ 

206 



AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 

cannot be reformed; it can only be 
restored. 

The great prominence into which, the 
term "authority" is brought by Mr. 
Campbell, prepares one for the assertion 
that the Bible is essentially a "law- 
book." Since it contains every spirit- 
ual idea known to man, and presents a 
perfect revelation of God and of the will 
of Christ, it is to be conceived of as the 
codified law of an absolute monarch; not 
as a record of religious experiences, but 
as the source of all religion. Those 
who called the first day of the week 
"Sabbath" and cited the Fourth Com- 
mandment as authority for its observ- 
ance, were criticised, not because their 
spirit was legalistic, but because they 
mixed two laws and obeyed neither. 
The Christian law was expressed in the 
apostolic custom of breaking bread every 
Lord's day, and this law was as rigidly 
binding upon Christians as the law of the 
Sabbath had been upon the Jews. 

This somewhat legalistic conception 

of Christianity is not to be entirely ac- 
207 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS THEOLOGY 

counted for by any one or two causes. 
Its proximate cause was the urgent need 
of an interpretation of religion which 
could be presented in a simple set of 
positive rules. The aspect of Christian- 
ity which is simplest, most readily 
grasped and most easily defended, is its 
legal aspect, and it was that phase ac- 
cordingly which received most imme- 
diate emphasis. 

With Campbell's emphasis upon the 
will of Christ, expressed in the form of 
laws and codified in the New Testament 
as the ultimate seat of religious authority, 
it is worth while to compare those Eng- 
lish ethical theories which, from the 
time of Hobbes, had found the ultimate 
ethical authority to be some form of law. 
With Hobbes, morality consisted in con- 
formity to the will of the sovereign. 
With Locke it was obedience to the 
triple law of God, the state, and public 
opinion. Butler and Paley emphasized 
the theological reference and made the 
will of God the authority for ethics. Mr. 

Campbell transferred the same principle 

208 



AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION 

to religion, including Christian doctrine 
and church polity, and considered the 
Bible as the complete and final expres- 
sion of the will of God on these topics. 
The Christian Baptist rings with the de- 
nunciation of the clergy, because, by 
assuming for themselves the sole right 
of interpretation, they had virtually 
usurped the authority of Scripture. 

With respect to the problem of the 
seat of authority in religion, Mr. Camp- 
bell's position affords an instructive 
comparison and contrast with the Neo- 
Catholicism of the Oxford Movement, 
led by Newman, Pusey and Froude. 
Both were reactionary movements 
against the extreme individualism of the 
eighteenth century philosophy and its 
self-confessed failure to give knowledge 
of ultimate reality or religious truth. 
Both Newman and Campbell took it at 
its word. Since, then, man cannot find 
within himself the basis for either cer- 
tainty or unity of religious belief, re- 
course must be had to an external 

authority. Newman conceives the 
14 209 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

churcli to be tlie agent for transmitting 
the will of God to men, and what is 
transmitted is the grace of God, an up- 
lifting influence which makes it appeal 
rather to man's emotions than to his in- 
tellect. With Campbell, on the other 
hand, this external authority is lodged 
in the Bible, which is the repository for 
a deposit of divine revelation in the 
form of ideas and commands to be ap- 
prehended by the intellect. 

2IO 



Chapter VI 
Faith and Repentance 



FAITH AND REPENTANCE. 

I. Controversy on Nature of Faith: 

1. Hervey: Mora\4an — Methodism mysticism. 

2. Sandeman and McLean : intellectualism. 

3. Fuller: a mediating position. 

4. Degenerate mysticism of Campbell's day. 

II. Mr. Campbell's View: 

1. Faith — ^belief of testimony. 

2. Repentance is reformation. 

3. Relation of repentance to faith. 

III. Campbell Transcends His Own Theology : 

1. Includes effects in causes. 

2. Conversion is an unbroken process. 

3. His theological definition of faith was 

Lockian intellectualism; his religious use 
of faith centered in person of Christ. 

Note. — On the relation of Alexander Campbell's 
view of faith to the eighteenth centurj^ controversy, 
many valuable suggestions may be found in Lon- 
gan's Origm of the Disciples of Christ, a. volume 
which is in all respects the most significant contri- 
bution which has yet been made to the philosoph- 
ical history of the Disciples. 



FAITH AND REPENTANCE. 

In tlie eighteenth, century there arose 
in England a notable controversy in re- 
gard to the nature of faith. James 
Hervey, a member of John Wesley's 
society at Oxford, which was nicknamed 
the "Godly Club" and which was the 
seed of Methodism, wrote the "Dia- 
logues between Theron and Aspasio," in 
which he expounded the Methodist- 
Moravian conception of faith. The es- 
sential feature of this view was its em- 
phasis upon that item of Christian expe- 
rience which he called the "sense of 
adoption," and the identification of this 
emotional condition with "saving faitli." 
There are two elements to be noted in 
this view: first ^ it makes faith a state 
of feeling, rather than an act of the in- 
tellect; second^ it places faith at the end 
oft he process of conversion, rather than 

at its beginning. 

213 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

Hervey's book called forth many re- 
plies and objections, and the opponents 
of his view may be divided into two 
classes according as they opposed one or 
both of the above mentioned positions. 
Robert Sandeman, whose name is fa- 
miliar through his connection with the 
Scotch sect known as Sandemanians, 
opposed both parts of Hervey's thesis. 
He maintained that faith is distinctly an 
act of the intellect, in which it appre- 
hends truth through the acceptance of 
testimony; and that the change of heart 
and feeling, which constitutes the as- 
surance of salvation, is the effect of 
faith. Faith is therefore given the first 
place in the ordo saliUis. This view was 
also adopted by Mcl^ean, a representa- 
tive Scotch Baptist. 

A second protest against Hervey's 
view came from Andrew Fuller, an ac- 
knowledged leader of the progressive 
English Baptists. In his book entitled 
"The Gospel Worthy of all Accepta- 
tion," he asserts that faith is simply be- 
lief of what God has said and that the 
214 



FAITH AND REPENTANCE 

assurance of salvation, which comes as 
an emotional experience, is something 
quite distinct from faith; but he still 
maintains, like Hervey, that faith stands 
at the end of the process and must be 
preceded by repentance, which is defined 
as an emotional experience, a change of 
heart. 

The controversy was maintained with 
some vigor through the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Fuller's mediating position found 
few supporters, and the parties to the 
controversy found it easier to maintain 
one or the other of the extreme posi- 
tions. The much needed evangelical 
revival, which Wesley anism was instru- 
mental in advancing, gave a distinct 
■oractical advantao:e for the time to that 
view which emphasized the emotional 
element of religion, and that portion of 
the religious world which considered it- 
self especially evangelical gave general 
acceptance to Hervey 's view of both the 
nature and the place of faith. 

Such was the situation in America at 
the time when Mr. Campbell began his 

215 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

work. In revolting against that view of 
religion which, was cold and formal and 
gave inadequate recognition to the im- 
portance of a change of heart, there was 
developed a Protestant mysticism which 
was, in Mr. Campbell's opinion, unrea- 
sonable, untrue and confusing. Instead 
of presenting to the sinner certain facts, 
backed up by testimony and supported 
by evidence, and telling him first to be- 
lieve these facts, and then to make his 
belief of them the basis for a change in 
his manner of life, and to let his feelings 
take care of themselves, they sought 
first to arouse a sense of sinfulness, then 
a feeling of penitence which was ex- 
pected to be accompanied by deep 
despondence, until there came a demon- 
stration of divine forgiving grace which 
manifested itself in an emotional "assur- 
ance of forgiveness," — and this was 
"saving faith." The theological found- 
ation for this popular mysticism was 
found in Hervey's definition of faith. 
The removal of these abuses, as Mr. 

Campbell considered them, demanded 

216 



FAITH AND REPENTANCE 

the introduction of a different conception 
of faith. lyongan says ( Origin of the 
Disciples of Christy p. 73) that Camp- 
bell's view of faith and the priority of 
change of heart to faith was "the most 
fundamental conception of what may be 
called his theology." We have found 
it necessary to consider his conception of 
the Kingdom of God as lying at the 
center of his formulation of the Christian 
system; but in considering the process 
of entering the Kingdom of God, un- 
doubtedly the idea of the nature of faith 
and its relative position was his most 
fundamental conception. 

The documents of this eighteenth cen- 
tury controversy were carefully studied 
by Mr. Campbell, and when he under- 
took the formulation of his views upon 
faith, it was with a full acquaintance with 
what had already been said on both sides 
of the subject. His teaching in regard 
to faith may be stated as follows: 

"Faith is the belief of testimony. 

Where testimony begins, faith begins; 

and where testimony ends, faith ends." 
217 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

As we get all knowledge of the external 
world through the five senses, so we get 
our acquaintance with all other facts 
through testimony. Faith, therefore, is 
equivalent to an extension of sense per- 
ception. History and narrative are only 
other names for testimony. There is 
only one kind of faith, and that is his- 
torical faith, because it is the acceptance 
of an historical record. The validity of 
faith is tested by the evidences of gen- 
uineness which the testimony brings 
with it. The differences and degrees of 
value which attach to different beliefs, 
depend solely upon the facts which are 
believed. The facts which are the ob- 
ject of Christian faith are summed up in 
the proposition that "Jesus is the ]\Ies- 
siah, the Son of God." Faith in that 
fact is saving faith, because it is faith in 
a saving fact. As it is not eating that 
keeps the body alive, but the food that 
is eaten; so we are not saved by the act 
of believing, but by the facts of the Gos- 
pel which we are able, by faith, to apply 

to our own salvation. Hence when we 

218 



FAITH AND REPENTANCE 

say we are "justified by faith," faith is 
not to be understood as a meritorious 
act in reward for which salvation is 
granted, for that would reduce justifica- 
tion by faith to a mere particular phase 
of justification by good works. On this 
point Campbell differed radically from 
Sandeman and Mclyean, who held that 
justification by faith excludes the efficacy 
of all holy dispositions after the first act 
of faith, and that "the bare belief of 
the bare truth" is imputed to us for 
righteousness. 

As faith is simply belief of testimony, 
it comes about in a purely natural way 
whenever sufficient testimony is pre- 
sented. It is useless to attempt to make 
men believe by threats, persuasion, ex- 
hortation, or emotional excitement. 
"No person can help believing when 
sufficient evidence is presented and no 
man can believe without evidence." 
"Such is the constitution of the human 
mind that a man is as passive in believ- 
ing as he was in receiving his name, or 

as the eye is in receiving the rays of 
219 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

light that fall upon it from tlie sun; 
consequently no man can help believing 
when the evidence of truth arrests his 
attention/' (^Christian Baptist ^^. 142.) 
This extreme statement was intended to 
emphasize the naturalness of the origin 
of faith when evidence is presented, and 
to show that no exercise of divine power 
is needed to create faith in each indi- 
vidual. It is therefore unnecessary and 
inappropriate to pray for faith. If a 
man wants faith, all he has to do is to 
lay aside his blinding prejudices and ex- 
amine the evidence and the testimony. 
Though the eye is passive in receiving 
the rays of light, yet a man has the 
power to open his eyes. The human 
will has power over the act of belief, be- 
cause it has control of the conditions 
which precede belief. Unbelief is volun- 
tary blindness; it is sin. On this point 
again Mr. Campbell differed from the 
Sandemanians, who had maintained that 
special spiritual influences were necessary 
to produce in each individual that belief of 

divine testimony which constitutes faith. 

220 



FAITH AND REPENTANCE 

While Campbell agreed with Sandeman 
in two important points in regard to faith, 
viz., its nature and its place in the order 
of events, it will be seen that he differed 
from him on two others equally impor- 
tant: the value of faith, and the way in 
which it is produced. The last point 
especially was the one which gave its 
distinctive character to his method of 
presenting the Gospel. 

Mr. Campbell's views of faith, of re- 
pentance, and of the relation between 
the two, are so closely and logically con- 
nected that it is impossible to set forth 
one apart from the others. That view 
of faith which had considered it the last 
stage in the process of conversion and 
something for which the sinner must 
wait until it pleased God to give it to 
him, necessarily considered repentance 
as a sorrow which could find no imme- 
diate issue in reformation. Repentance 
came before faith, and it was separated 
from reformation by a period of waiting 
and seeking for the assurance of pardon. 
But when Campbell put faith first, 

221 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

reformation could follow immediately. 
His own definition of repentance is com- 
prehensive and fully indicative of the 
practical character which he ascribed 
to it. 

To the Jews repentance meant 
"change your views of the person and 
character of the Messiah and change 
your behavior toward him; put your- 
selves under his government and guid- 
ance, and obey him." To the Gentiles 
it meant "change your views of the 
character of God and of his government, 
and receive his Son as his ambassador; 
and yield him the required homage by 
receiving his favor and honoring his in- 
stitutions. This is reformation towards 
God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." 

This statement indicates not only the 
practical character of repentance, as Mr. 
Campbell conceived it, but the extreme 
difficulty which he experienced in sepa- 
rating the various items in the process of 
salvation for purposes of definition. Be- 
ginning with an attempt to define 
repentance, he ends by stating that what 

222 



FAITH AND REPENTANCE 

he lias defined is both faith and repent- 
ance. And yet there is no difficulty in 
understanding his thought; and this 
very tendency to unite the elements 
even in definition, indicates how close 
was the union between them in his 
mind. The test of faith is in its fruit- 
age of reformation. The value of refor- 
mation is that it springs from faith. 
The change of heart and the change of 
life are so inseparable that the two are 
united under a single name, — repent- 
ance. 

It was characteristic of Mr. Camp- 
bell's mode of thought to include effects 
with causes in a manner which did not 
conduce to clearness of definition. So, 
after defining faith as simply the accept- 
ance of confirmed testimony, he says 
elsewhere that faith includes trust or 
confidence, because belief of statements 
about Christ leads to trust in him. 
Ivikewise repentance is made to include 
not only sorrow for sins and the resolu- 
tion to forsake sin, but also the actual 
reformation of life, which is the test of 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

the genuineness of the resolution. In 
any case, it was his purpose to guard 
against the idea that repentance was a 
mere feeling. The emotional element 
must be kept in the background to in- 
sure emphasis upon the practical out- 
come which was desired. 

This apparent confusion of definitions 
has the further value of representing in 
a very life-like way the fact that these 
several acts, which analysis may isolate 
and theological science may define sep- 
arately, are really parts of one connected 
and unbroken process. Conversion is a 
change of the whole man. It is a sec- 
tion of human life, and life is always 
both a concrete and a complex thing. 
No definitions of faith or repentance or 
regeneration, however accurate as an- 
alyses of the psychological phenomena, 
can be adequate, if they represent these 
several items as so far disconnected that 
they can be defined without reference to 
each other. A picture of a moving 
body, to be accurate, must show the 

motion as well as the body that moves; 

224 



FAITH AND REPENTANCE 

and a definition of the elements of a 
complex psychological process, such as 
conversion, must exhibit the continuity 
of the process, even at the expense of 
the clearness of some of the details. 

It was a wholesome realization of the 
importance of representing the whole 
process of conversion as a vital unity, 
that saved Mr. Campbell from falling 
into the intellectualism which was war- 
ranted by his philosophical presuppo- 
sitions. When faith is isolated for 
definition, it is conceived in a purely 
intellectual form as the acquisition of 
information through testimony, the ac- 
ceptance of certain propositions as true. 
Applying strictly this theological defi- 
nition, the object of faith is certainly 
not a person but statements about a per- 
son. Campbell's lyockian conception of 
faith stopped here. But he saw at once 
that, considering faith not as an isolated 
mental act, but as the first step in a 
change of the whole man, the accept- 
ance of a certain proposition about Jesus 

led immediately to a certain attitude of 
15 225 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

the person toward him as a person. For 
religious purposes, the object of faith, is 
the person of Jesus in whom the believer 
is to trust as a Savior. But the theo- 
logical definition seldom gets beyond the 
assertion that faith in Jesus is accept- 
ance of a certain proposition about him. 
It can be said therefore that, as regards 
the conception of faith, his theological 
position was a thorough intellectualism; 
but the practical application of that in- 
tellectualism was to counteract a deteri- 
orated Protestant mysticism, and in its 
highest religious uses it issues in a lofty 
conception of faith as trust in a person. 
This is not the only case in which Mr. 
Campbell transcends the limits of his 
own theology and gives recognition to 
truths which cannot easily be fitted into 

his system of thought. 

226 



Chapter VII 
Baptism 



BAPTISM. 

I. Development of Campbell's View of 
Baptism : 

1. Influences in Ireland and Scotland. 

2. Declaration and Address — its logical conse- 

quences. 

3. Immersion of penitent believers. 

4. Development of design of baptism: 

(1) Walker Debate, 1820,— "connected 
with remission' ' . 

(2) McCalla Debate, 1823,— design of bap- 
tism clearly stated, but only as argu- 
ment for believers' baptism. 

(3) Rice Debate, 1843, — baptism for re- 
mission, a separate issue. 

II. Campbell's Final Doctrine of Baptism: 

1. Antecedents — objective and subjective. 

2. Action — immersion. 

3. Subjects — penitent believers. 

4. Design — remission, a change of state. 

III. Influence of the Sources. 

228 



BAPTISM. 

Since Mr. Campbell's final view of 
the nature and significance of tlie ordi- 
nance of baptism is in some important 
particulars unlike that of any system 
current during his formative period, cer- 
tainly no exception can be made in this 
case to the assertion that his view was 
not borrowed directly from any source. 
In the consideration of this doctrine and 
the relation which Mr. Campbell's view 
bore to those influences which we have 
called his sources, it will be especially 
apparent that he was indebted to those 
sources for suggestions and principles, 
but not for products. 

In a general way it may be said that, 
in his final view, Mr. Campbell agreed 
with the Baptists as to the form and 
subjects of baptism, while as to its signif- 
icance he sought a via media between 

baptismal regeneration, which as ordi- 
229 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

narily interpreted means a species of 
magic, and the Baptist theory that the 
rite is a symbol of a change which has 
already taken place in a man. 

The historical development of Mr. 
Campbell's doctrine of baptism can be 
traced with more completeness than 
the growth of any other of his ideas. 
Thomas Campbell was a minister in 
the Anti-Burgher branch of the Sece- 
der section of the Presbyterian Church, 
and under the influence of this relig- 
ious body Alexander grew to manhood. 
This body held fast to the view of 
baptism which was at that time con- 
sidered orthodox by all Protestants ex- 
cept the Baptists. He was sprinkled in 
infancy, as a youth "fell under convic- 
tion" in the usual way, had all the ordi- 
nary religious experience of the time, 
with rather more than the usual fervor, 
and became an active member of the 
church. The subject of baptism never 
came up for consideration in the early 
days in Ireland before Thomas Campbell 

emigrated to Pennsylvania. 
230 



BAPTISM 

The only disturbing element among 
the religious influences of that period 
came from the Independents of Rich 
Hill, a congregation of free and uncon- 
ventional thinkers who had received an 
impulse from the ' eighteenth century 
Evangelical Movement in England, and 
whose zeal and love of liberty had been 
quickened by visits from such bold 
spirits as the free-lance evangelist, Row- 
land Hill. The period of sympathetic 
contact with this congregation assisted 
in whetting Alexander Campbell's appe- 
tite for new truth, but the subject of 
baptism was not one which came under 
discussion. 

After the emigration of Thomas Camp- 
bell to America, a series of fortunate 
accidents, culminating in shipwreck off 
the west coast of Scotland, brought 
Alexander to Glasgow for nearly a year. 
It was through his acquaintance with 
the Rich Hill Independents that he re- 
ceived a letter of introduction to Mr. 
Greville Ewing of Glasgow, and it was 
through Mr. Ewing that he came in 

2.^1 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

toucli with one of the most important 
practical religious movements of the day 
under the leadership of the Haldane 
brothers. Beginning with a sincere de- 
sire to preach the Gospel to the heathen, 
in an age when both the established and 
the Seceder churches in Scotland re- 
fused to countenance any foreign mis- 
sionary enterprise, these two brothers, 
both men of wealth, themselves became 
a missionary society and a board or min- 
isterial education. 

The religious condition of Scotland 
at the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
tury was comparable to that of England 
at the beginning of the eighteenth, and 
the remedial measures were not unlike. 
Wesleyanism and the Evangelical revi- 
val shook Anglicanism from her slum- 
ber; the evangelistic campaign sup- 
ported by the Haldanes was part of the 
movement by which religion in Scotland 
was revived after the reign of Moderat- 
ism. It was not a theological move- 
ment, and considerable discrepancies in 

theological opinion actually existed 
232 



BAPTISM 

among the several participants. It was 
primarily a religious quickening, and it 
issued in the formation of several con- 
gregations which were conspicuous for 
their zeal for evangelization and good 
works, and for their disregard of the 
lifeless formalism and dogmatism which 
characterized both the established church 
and the seceders. 

The subject of baptism had come into 
prominence among this group of men 
shortly after Mr. Campbell reached Glas- 
gow. James A. Haldane had been im- 
mersed the previous year and his brother 
Robert soon followed his example. The 
Glasites, a Scottish sect which arose 
early in the eighteenth century, had 
adopted immersion some years before 
and were very strict about it, as they 
were about all points of their discipline. 
They had come to be called "Scotch 
Baptists", though their origin and their 
tenets were different from those of the 
regular Baptists. The congregation of 
Independents in Glasgow under David 

Dale (the father-in-law of Robert Owen) 

233 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

had split twice on the question of im- 
mersion and some other matters. Mr. 
Bwing, on the other hand, though he 
was working with the Haldanes, re- 
mained a firm adherent to the old posi- 
tion, and there resulted a division in the 
Haldane church in Glasgow. The im- 
mersionist wing was willing to tolerate 
pedobaptists, but the pedobaptists, head- 
ed by Mr. Bwing, would not tolerate the 
immersionists. Mr. Innes, who came 
to preach for the pedobaptist branch, 
changed his views and went over to the 
other party, and so did William Stevens, 
who was in charge of the Haldanes' 
Kdinburgh Seminary. 

Such were the agitations to which 
this question was giving rise at this 
time. But in spite of this fact, there is 
no evidence that Alexander Campbell 
seriously considered the question of bap- 
tism at this time. His close association 
with Mr. Greville Bwing did not pre- 
vent him from siding with the Haldanes 
in some controversies on matters of 

administration which disturbed their 

234 



BAPTISM 

friendly relations at that time, and it is 
certain that he did not imbibe from Mr. 
Ewing the latter' s deep-seated aversion 
to immersion. Although on some other 
matters he found himself out of accord 
with the denomination in which he had 
been jeared, and before leaving Glasgow 
definitely renounced the communion of 
the Seceder Presbyterian Church, it ap- 
pears that in regard to baptism he held 
to his original view, while looking with 
a spirit of easy-going toleration upon 
those who adopted immersion. 

While Alexander Campbell was in 
Glasgow, his father, in western Penn- 
sylvania, wrote his Declaration and Ad- 
dress, the primary aim of which was to 
promote union, and the fundamental 
principle of which was expressed in the 
aphorism, *' Where the Scriptures speak 
we speak, where the Scriptures are silent 
we are silent." When this principle 
was enunciated by Thomas Campbell for 
the first time, one of his auditors, An- 
drew Munro, a Presbyterian, arose in 

the congregation and said that the prin- 

235 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

ciple was dangerous, for it would require 
the giving up of the practice of infant 
baptism. Mr. Campbell said he would 
be willing to give it up if it was not in 
the Bible, but felt assured that it could 
be supported by Scriptural authority. 
He admitted that it was hard to frame a 
positive argument for it, but urged long 
precedent, that there was no reason to 
be in a hurry to abandon it, that it 
should be made a matter of forbearance, 
that form was not essential and that 
baptism was not a matter of prime im- 
portance like faith and righteousness. 
His only positive argument for the bap- 
tism of infants was the analogy with 
circumcision. 

It was at this point that Alexander 
Campbell arrived from Scotland. On 
reading the proof-sheets of the Declara- 
tion and Address, he was confronted 
with the question of infant baptism. A 
Presbyterian preacher, a Mr. Riddle, 
with whom he consulted, warned him 
that the principles laid down in the 
Address would make him a Baptist. 

2.^,6 



BAPTISM 

With a view to disproving this asser- 
tion for his own peace of mind, Mr. 
Campbell secured all the books he could 
find on the subject from the pedobaptist 
standpoint, and gave them a thorough 
study. Contrary to his expectation and 
intention, he emerged from this study 
convinced that there was no scriptural 
authority for infant baptism. Still he 
allowed his father to persuade him for a 
time that there was no need to make a 
disturbance about it; that it was not 
worth while to split the church over the 
question, or to demand immersion of 
those who had already been sprinkled 
as infants, or to be immersed themselves. 
The position was, of course, an illog- 
ical one, considering the principles of 
the Declaration and Address, audit could 
not have continued long. The events 
which followed forced them to assume a 
more consistent attitude. Thomas Camp- 
bell was rejected by the Synod of Pitts- 
burg because he said that infant baptism 
was unauthorized. In reviewing this 

action of the Synod, Alexander Camp- 

237 



ALEXAN'DER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

bell ioT the first time formulated and 
systematized his views on the subject. 
Some members of the Brush Run con- 
gregation, which had been organized on 
the principles of the Declaration and Ad- 
dress, insisted on being immersed and 
Thomas Campbell reluctantly consented 
to act, but did not go into the water 
himself. The birth of Alexander Camp- 
bell's first child forced upon him the 
question as to whether he should christ- 
en it. A thorough re-study of the 
whole question was made. A short time 
before, in a sermon on the Commission, 
he had stated that it was not scriptural 
to make it a term of communion, so he 
let it slip. Now he reached the conclu- 
sion that he was an unbaptized man and 
that it was an important matter. The 
child was not christened, and Thomas 
and Alexander Campbell were immersed. 
The question of the form of baptism 
and its importance as a scriptural term 
of fellowship, had now been settled. On 
both of these topics, the position taken 

was precisely that of the Baptists, but 

238 



BAPTISM 

it will be seen from the preceding sketch 
that the direct influence of Baptist teach- 
ing played a very small part, if any at 
all, in the development of Mr. Camp- 
bell's views on the subject of baptism. 
It was natural that the congregation, 
which had advanced to this position with 
the Campbells, should seek and find fel- 
lowship among the Baptists. The points 
yet to be worked out were the pre- 
requisites and the design of baptism, and 
it was at these points that there were 
developed divergences from the accepted 
Baptist doctrines, which issued finally in 
the separation of the new movement 
from that denomination. 

The working out of the design of bap- 
tism may be said to have been accom- 
plished in three periods, marked by an 
increasing clearness in the explanation 
of the phrase, "baptism for the remis- 
sion of sins,'^ and by an increasing em- 
phasis upon the importance of this con- 
ception in the Christian system. As the 
doctrine was worked out in debates for 

polemic use, so the phases of its devel- 

239 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

opment are to be traced in three great 
debates: first, the Walker debate in 
1820; second, the McCalla debate in 
1823; third, the Rice debate in 1843. 

(i) In the debate with Mr. Walker, 
in which Mr. Campbell appeared as the 
champion of the Baptist position against 
a Presbyterian, Walker's sole argument 
for infant baptism was based on the 
analogy between baptism and circum- 
cision, involving the presupposition that 
the covenant on which the Christian 
Church is built is the same as that on 
which the Jewish Church was built. 
Mr. Campbell endeavored, by making the 
distinction between the dispensations, to 
overthrow the basis of this argument. 
He objected to the statement that bap- 
tism is the seal of the covenant as cir- 
cumcision had been with the Jews. He 
said: "Baptism is connected with the 
remission of sins and the gift of the 
Holy Spirit." This general statement 
of the design of the ordinance was not 
in this debate elaborated or further de- 
fined, and it is used only as an argu- 

240 



BAPTISM 

ment against the baptism of infants. 
The Baptists were satisfied with the out- 
come of the debate and the virtual defeat 
of their opponent, but they were not 
altogether pleased with the arguments 
by which the victory had been won. 

(2) The debate with Mr. McCalla 
dealt with the same questions as that 
,with Mr. Walker and in much the same 
way. We find here a distinct affirmation 
that baptism is for the remission of sins 
and an exposition of that doctrine, in- 
cluding the distinction between real and 
formal remission of sins. He says: "I 
know it will be said that I have affirmed 
that baptism saz^es us. Well, Peter and 
Paul have said so before me. ' ' ( Richard- 
son's Memoirs^ //. ,p. 81.) Again: "The 
blood of Jesus Christ then really cleanses 
us from all sin. Behold the goodness of 
God in giving us d, formal \.Qke.n of it, by 
ordaining baptism expressly for the re- 
mission of sins." "Paul's sins were 
really pardoned when he believed, yet he 
had no solemn pledge of the fact, no 

formal 2iQ.Q^\\X.d\^ no formal purgation of 
16 241 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS THEOLOGY 

his sins, till lie had washed them away 
in the water of baptism." (Richard- 
son's Memoirs^ 11.^ p. 82.) The remis- 
sion, both real and formal, has reference 
to the personal sins of the individual, 
and does not refer to inherited "original 
sin"; hence it does not apply to infants. 
It is to be noted that although the design 
of baptism is here fairly developed, it is 
still used only as an argument to prove 
the invalidity of infant baptism. 

(3) The period of the publication of 
the Christian Baptist saw a further work- 
ing out of the design of baptism, the 
effect of which was to give greater promi- 
nence in Mr. Campbell's system to those 
ideas which had been previously devel- 
oped. Perhaps the most important fac- 
tor in bringing about this increased 
emphasis on the doctrine of baptism for 
the remission of sins, was the influence 
of Walter Scott, who, in 1827, g^^'^ sys- 
tem to a mass of ideas which had been 
previously worked out, by proclaiming 
the 07'do saliLtis — faith, repentance and 

baptism — and the relation in which these 

242 



BAPTISM 

several factors stand one to anotHer. 
Faith is the change in mental attitude; 
repentance the change in the ideal of 
life and the beginning of the change in 
conduct; baptism produces the change in 
state whereby the penitent believer re- 
ceives formal pardon for his sins. Mr. 
Campbell at once adopted this arrange- 
ment, the separate elements of which he 
had already enunciated, but which he 
had not yet arranged systematically, and 
thenceforth the teaching of baptism by 
immersion of believers only becomes 
rather a corollary of the doctrine of bap- 
tism for the remission of sins; instead of 
the latter being, as before, merely an 
argument for the support of the former. 
This added emphasis upon the design of 
baptism is seen in the debate with Mr. 
Rice in 1843, i^ which Mr. Campbell 
maintained as a separate proposition that 
"Christian baptism is for the remission 
of past sins." And in Christian Bap- 
tism (p. 248) he says: "The design of 
this institution has long been thrown in 

the shade because of the wordy and im- 

243 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

passioned controversy about what the 
action is, and who may be the proper 
subject of it. Whatever importance 
there may be in settling these questions, 
that importance is wholly to be appreci- 
ated bv the design of the institution. 
This is the only value of it." 

An understanding of Mr. Campbell's 
final position on the doctrine is to be 
reached by a study of the Christian 
System (1835), the debate with Rice 
(1843) ^^^ Christian Baptism (1852). 
The subject may conveniently be con- 
sidered under the divisions which are 
employed in Christian Baptism. 

I. The antecedejits of baptism may 
be classified as objective and subjective 
antecedents. The objective antecedent 
is the Bible, in which baptism is enjoined 
as a direct command of Christ, a '^pecu- 
liar and positive ordinance." The au- 
thoritv of Christ as a lawg:iver and of the 
New Testament as his law-book is the 
first presupposition. Baptism is a "posi- 
tive," as distinguished from a "moral," 

requirement; the virtue and value of it 

244 



BAPTISM 

He, not in any inherent fitness of tlie 
ordinance, but in the fact that it is com- 
manded. The subjective antecedents 
represent the attitude of the individual 
toward the truth and toward his own 
past sins in the light of the truth; they 
are faith and repentance. 

2. The action is immersion in water 
in the name of the Father, Son and Holy 
Spirit. The arguments for this are 
chiefly philological, and these are worked 
out with a degree of thoroughness which 
leaves little to be added on the subject. 

3. The subjects of baptism are peni- 
tent believers; i. e., those who have ful- 
filled the requirements presented as sub- 
jective antecedents. 

4. The design of baptism, or the 
change which it is intended to effect, is 
"the remission of sins." The use of 
this Biblical phrase in connection with 
baptism has been a cause of much 
offense and many accusations. If it were 
meant that baptism, and baptism alone, 
produces the entire change in man 

whereby he passes from the condition of 

245 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS THEOLOGY 

a condemned sinner to that of a pardoned 
saint, lie would be rightly accused of 
teaching baptismal regeneration, in the 
ordinary sense of the term. He is saved 
from that by making a distinction be- 
tween the s^a^e of a man and the c/zar- 
acter of a man, and between real and. 
formal remission of sins. These two 
distinctions are closely connected. Real 
remission expresses God's attitude to- 
ward the past sins of a man who has 
changed his character through faith and 
repentance. Formal remission expresses 
God's attitude toward those sins when 
the man has changed also his state; i. e., 
has entered the state of sonship or of 
citizenship in the kingdom of God, 
through fulfillment of the positive re- 
quirements which are the conditions of 
entrance. 

This distinction, which avoids bap- 
tismal regeneration, is not to be inter- 
preted as belittling baptism, by making 
it effect a 77iere change of state, for the 
entrance into the new state is a matter of 

importance. It is necessary for the en- 

246 



BAPTISM 

joyment of its privileges. Mr. Camp- 
bell's standing illustration of this was 
the analogy of a foreigner coming to 
this country. He may believe in our 
government and give it the allegiance of 
his heart, but he cannot enjoy the privi- 
leges of citizenship until he has changed 
his state from that of an alien to that of 
a citizen, by naturalization through the 
process duly prescribed by law. Bap- 
tism, like naturalization, is the formal 
oath of allegiance by which an alien 
becomes a citizen. In neither case does 
the form in itself effect any magical 
change in the subject's disposition. In 
both cases a change of opinion and of 
affections is presupposed, and the form is 
the culmination of a process. 

With this distinction between char- 
acter and state, compare the distinction 
Ijetween positive and moral precepts. 
Remission of sins follows immersion, 
just as the falling of the walls of Jeri- 
cho followed the blowing of the rams' 
horns. In both cases the fulfillment of 

the divine promise was conditioned upon 
247 



A LEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOG Y 

obedience to a positive divine ordinance. 
Although Mr. Campbell points out the 
symbolical meaning of the ordinance of 
baptism, he lays the emphasis not upon 
its spiritual significance, but upon the 
fact that it has been commanded. The 
erection of this particular form into a 
condition of remission is sufficiently ex- 
plained by saying that "it is as easy for 
God to forgive us our sins in the act of 
immersion as in any other way." 

Although there was a large measure of 
originality in Mr. Campbell's method of 
handling the question of baptism, yet 
there may be seen in it the influence of 
some of the conceptions v/hich he had 
received. 

I. One of his strongest arguments 
against infant baptism was the denial 
that baptism was the counterpart of cir- 
cumcision and that therefore the rules 
which applied to the latter could be ap- 
plied also to the former. Proper empha- 
sis upon the distinction between the 
Jewish and Christian dispensations, with 

the consequent establishment of the 

248 



BAPTISM 

principle that the laws of the new cove- 
nant are to be sought only in the docu- 
ments pertaining to the period subse- 
quent to its formation, disposed of this 
argument. And it not only swept out 
of the way the argument from the Old 
Testament for the baptism of infants, 
but it cleared the way for a larger view 
of the significance of the ordinance, 
which would not be limited by the sig- 
nificance of the Jewish rite. The bear- 
ing of the Covenant Theology, as orig- 
inated by Cocceius and developed in 
Holland and Scotland, upon this distinc- 
tion between the dispensations, has 
already been pointed out. 

2. In his constant emphasis upon 
Christianity as a law^ and especially 
upon the laws of naturalization, and 
most especially upon the positive law of 
baptism, there is, as has been already 
suggested, a reminder of the general tone 
of English thought in the eighteenth 
century, in which law was the highest 
category of both ethics and religion. 

Campbell's teaching in regard to baptism 
249 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

might be brought under Paley's state- 
ment of the criterion and motive of right 
conduct, — to obey the expressed will of 
God, as a law, in the hope of an eternal 
reward, as a motive. 

3. The distinction between moral and 
positive precepts, which comes out 
prominently in assigning to baptism its 
place in relation to other Christian 
duties, is a theological interpretation of 
the old distinction between law of 
nature and law of society, as stated by 
Hugo Grotius and as embodied in the 
social contract theory of the origin of 
society. There is no conceivable condi- 
tion of humanity in which men would 
not be amenable to the moral laws; they 
are unconditional and unchanging. But 
the positive laws of God's covenants 
with men not only change with the suc- 
cessive dispensations, but they belong to 
an order of things which is purely reme- 
dial and would never have existed, had 
man not fallen from the original estate 
in which he existed only under moral 

law. This is closely analogous to that 
250 



BAPTISM 

form of the social contract theory which 
conceives of men as existing originally 
only under the natural law of human 
rights, but later forming governments 
and coming under the law of society, in 
order to escape the evils which had fol- 
lowed from the abuse of natural rights. 
4. The ordinances were conceived by 
Mr. Campbell to derive their spiritual 
value, aside from what they possessed as 
mere acts of obedience to positive pre- 
cepts, from the fact that they presented 
the facts of the gospel in concrete form 
to the senses. On a sensational theory 
of knowledge, any type or symbol re- 
ceives added importance because of the 
appeal which it makes to the senses. 
The connection of this Lockian theory 
of knowledge with his high estimate of 
the ordinances was recognized by Mr. 
Campbell himself, for, in speaking of the 
perpetuity of the Lord's Supper and 
baptism, he said: ''So long as the five 
senses are the* five avenues to the human 
understanding and the medium of all 

divine communication to the spirit of 
251 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

man, so long will it be necessary to use 

them in the cultivation of piety and 

humanity." 

252 



Chapter VIII 

The Work of the Holy Spirit in Con- 
version and Regeneration 



THE WORK OF THE HOI.Y SPIRIT IN 
CONVERSION AND REGENERATION. 

I. The Practicai, ImpuIvS:e:: 

1. Revolt against mystical doctrine of Holy- 

Spirit. 

2. Desire to make a statement which would be 

(a) practically satisfactory, (b) Biblical, 
(c) consistent with his view of the nature 
of man. 

II. Work of the Spirit in Making Chris- 
tians: 

1. Negative statement — points opposed. 

2. Positive statement: (a) Spirit of Wisdom 

gives testimony through Word, (b) Spirit 
of Power gives evidence through miracles, 
gifts and prophecy. 

3. Consistent Ivockianism so far. 

III. Work of Spirit on Christians: 

1. Rice debate — all work of Spirit is through 

Word. Arguments: (a) Constitution of 
man. (b) All spiritual ideas come from 
Bible. 

2. Different definitions of ' 'regeneration. ' ' 

3. Recognition of spiritual influences which 

must be prayed for — un-Lockian. 

4. No philosophy of prayer in sensationalism. 

IV. Summary of I^ockian Infi^uences: 

1 . Protest against ' 'metaphysical regeneration. ' ' 

2. Influence of Spirit only through sensible 

means. 

3. Emotions not a criterion. 

254 



THE WORK OF THE HOIvY SPIRIT 
IN CONVERSION AND RE- 
GENERATION. 

It will be impossible to avoid repeat- 
ing some points here which have already 
been mentioned in treating of faith and 
repentance and baptism, since, according 
to the definition by which Mr. Campbell 
most consistently abides, conversion, 
justification, regeneration and sanctifica- 
tion are synonymous names for that total 
process, of which faith and repentance 
and baptism are component parts. 

No principle was more fundamental to 
Mr. Campbell's religious thinking than 
his opposition to that baneful form of 
mysticism which was current in his day. 
Stated in barest outline, the situation was 
this: The doctrine of the total deprav- 
ity of the human race through the sin 
of Adam — a doctrine which Calvin had 

inherited from Augustine and which the 
255 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

Protestant world had received and per- 
petuated — was interpreted as implying 
that fallen man was in some way inca- 
pacitated for the reception of the truth; 
that he could not believe the truth of 
the Gospel on the testimony of the 
Scriptures and could not repent of his 
sins, until the Holy Spirit, acting directly 
upon his heart, without any sensible 
agency, had changed its nature and re- 
stored to it the lost power of believing. 
This change was called regeneration, or 
sometimes conversion. Since this was 
the first step in becoming a Christian, 
and since there w^as no specified way for 
a man to bring it about, and no way of 
knowing that it had been brought about 
except by the way he felt, the whole 
process was necessarily blocked in case a 
man did not feel as he thought a regen- 
erated person ought to feel. The result 
was an agonizing period of "seeking," 
and sometimes a dire despair of salvation, 
on the part of persons who had heard 
and believed the Gospel and repented 

of their sins. 

256 



THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

In opposition to this, Mr. Campbell 
aimed to develop a conception of the 
work of tlie Spirit -which would be free 
from this practical danger to religion, 
would be in accordance wath Scripture, 
and would harmonize with his viev/ of 
the constitution of man. A doctrine of 
the Holy Spirit, to meet the religious 
requirements must, first, provide a 
method by which the individual may 
become a Christian by following a plain 
and definite program and without wait- 
ing until there is performed upon him 
some action which he himself can not 
determine; and second, it must recog- 
nize the continual dependence of the 
Christian upon God for the grace to 
enable him to advance toward Christian 
perfection. To harmonize with his view 
of the nature and constitution of man, 
it must be in accordance with the psy- 
chology which is contained in lyocke's 
Essay. We shall see that, so far as it 
was possible to construct a theory which 
met both the religious and the philo- 
sophical requirements, Campbell's view 
17 257 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

of the Holy Spirit is logical and sys- 
tematic. But when Locke's philosophy 
proved inadequate to explain operations 
of the Spirit which he considered nec- 
essary and scriptural, the philosophy 
was abandoned (as Locke himself had 
abandoned it in emergencies) and his 
theology becomes illogical and incon- 
sistent with itself. It may be doubted 
whether he was conscious of his tem- 
porary desertion of the Lockian stand- 
point, but the fact of the desertion is 
obvious. In the consideration of this 
doctrine, therefore, both the extent and 
the limitations of Mr. Campbell's Lock- 
ianism will be apparent. 

Campbell's reaction against the mys- 
ticism which characterized the then 
current religious systems received an 
early stimulus from his association with 
the Haldanes in Glasgow. James A. 
Haldane gives the following account of 
his own religious experience (^Richard- 
son I., p. 156): "Gradually becoming 
more dissatisfied with myself, being con- 
vinced especially of the sin of unbelief, 
258 



THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

I wearied myself with looking for some 
wonderful change to take place, some 
inward feeling by which I might know 
that I was born again. The method of 
resting simply on the promises of God, 
which are yea and amen in Jesus Christ, 
was too plain and easy, and like Naa- 
man the Syrian, instead of bathing in 
the waters of Jordan and being clean, I 
would have some great work in my 
mind to substitute in place of Jesus 
Christ. ' ' The practical bent of the Hal- 
dane movement and the common-sense 
view of religion which was encouraged 
by it, made it natural that they 
should depart from the tenets of ortho- 
doxy upon this point first of all, and it 
was upon this point that Campbell, 
while associating with them, first came 
to have these doubts which issued in his 
separation from the Seceder Church of 
Scotland. 

. Naturally, too, this point early came 
up for consideration in the Christian 
Baptist. In the first volume of that 

periodical, a series of articles by Mr. 

259 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

Campbell on the Work of the Holy 
Spirit appeared, in which, pursuing the 
negative method which characterized 
that period of his work, he states four 
positions w^hich he opposes: 

(i) That "an invisible, indescribable 
energy is exerted upon the minds of 
men to make them Christians, and that 
too independent of, or prior to, the Word 
believed;" that is, that the Spirit is 
poured out like a sort of fluid and that 
through this agency the elect are regen- 
erated before they have faith. A devout 
preacher is quoted as saying that he 
was regenerated about three years before 
he believed in Christ, during which 
time he was a saved man. (2) That 
all men are spiritually dead and help- 
less, unable to take a single step toward 
God, until this supernatural act of re- 
generation has been performed upon 
them. Here appears the protest against 
the Augustinian and Calvinistic anthro- 
pology, with its emphasis upon the fall 
of man and the blighting effects of 

original sin. (3) That sinners must 

260 . 



THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

pass through a period of terror and 
despair — comparable to the Slough .of 
Despond in Pilgrini' s Progress — before 
they can believe the Gospel. (4) That 
physical signs of pardon are to be 
sought, and that emotional conditions 
are to be made the criterion by which 
one is to judge whether he is accepted 
by God. It is not a question of how 
you feel, but whether you have done 
those simple things which the sinner 
is commanded to do and is perfectly able 
to do. 

In the second volume of the Christian 
Baptist^ this negative statement is fol- 
lowed by a positive statement of his own 
position, under the head, "The Work of 
the Holy Spirit in the Salvation of 
Man." The following statement will 
show the position maintained here as 
compared with that denied above: 

(i) The Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of 
Wisdom, through the Scripture which it 
has dictated, gives man all the knowl- 
edge which he possesses about God and 

spiritual things. Knowledge of God's 

261 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

will is the first step in turning toward 
him; therefore the reading and accept- 
ance of the testimony given by the 
Spirit through the Word is the first step 
in salvation. 

(2) The Holy Spirit makes possible 
the acceptance of the testimony in the 
Scriptures, not by a creative act for each 
individual, but by a series of evidences 
which have been given once for all. It 
is as natural for a man to believe testi- 
mony as to see light or hear sound. A 
tendency to doubt, acquired through fre- 
quent deception, is the only sort of in- 
capacity which man has for receiving 
God's revelation; and there is needed to 
remove it, not a mysterious creative act 
of * 'enabling grace" giving a man new 
faculties, but evidence which the man 
can grasp with the faculties which he 
already has. The Holy Spirit, there- 
fore, has given not only testimony con- 
cerning God, but evidence of the truth 
of that testimony. Among the evi- 
dences, given by the Spirit to the truth 

of its testimony, are : (a) Miracles^ 

262 



THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

or the ' ' suspension of known laws of 
nature," which prove the presence of 
some power superior to the law. The 
nature of the miracle and its immediate 
purpose show the moral character of the 
miracle-worker. We know that the 
miracles of Jesus were done by the Spirit 
of God and not by Beelzebub, because 
they were beneficent works, (b) Special 
spiritical gifts^ by which is meant the 
miraculous powers which were given to 
some of the early disciples to aid them 
in proclaiming the Gospel, (c) Proph- 
ecy is a spiritual gift and. also a particu- 
lar kind of miracle which had a special 
evidencing power. It includes both the 
Old Testament prophecies about Jesus 
and his own prophecies of future events 
in his own life, e, g.^ the fish with the 
coin, the man with the water-jar, the 
colt tied, his own death and resurrec- 
tion, the destruction of the Temple and 
the fall of Jerusalem. 

The written words describing the mir- 
acles, spiritual gifts and prophecies are 

the work of the spirit as much as were 
263 



ALEXA^WEB CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

the original things themselves, and. are 
equally capable of giving evidence for 
the support of the testimony. The work 
of the Holy Spirit is therefore perma- 
nently divided into two parts: as the 
Spirit of Wisdom it reveals the nature 
and will of God ; as the Spirit of Power 
it gives evidence of the truth of this tes- 
timony. The "natural man" of i 
Corinthians is not the Calvinistic natural 
man, who has the revelation and the 
evidences but lacks "enabling grace"; 
it is man with the natural human reason 
but without th^ revelation of the Spirit 
or the evidence of its truth. 

So far Mr. Campbell's thought about 
the work of the Holy Spirit in the salva- 
tion of man presents a clear and consist- 
ent system, conforming to the psycholo- 
gy of sensationalism. In his own words 
(^Christian System^ p. 68): "We can- 
not separate the Spirit and the Word of 
God. Whatever the Word does the 
Spirit does, and whatever the Spirit does 
in the work of converting men the Word 

does." Up to this point the reference 
264 



THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

lias been to ttie Spirit's relation to the 
process by whicli men become Chris- 
tians. And so far his position is 
thoroughly in accord with that view of 
man which considers him a creature who 
can be reached only through the intellect 
(«. e.^ only by the impartation of ideas), 
and whose intellect can be reached only 
through the senses. The Spirit influ- 
ences men by revealing to them ideas 
about God and spiritual things; these 
ideas are couched in words, audible to 
the hearer and visible to the reader; and 
this testimony is backed by evidence 
which man cannot doubt without doubt- 
ing his senses. There is nothing mys- 
terious about the operation of the Spirit. 
It creates no new faculties in the mind, 
removes no natural impotence of the 
soul, and neither cleanses nor quickens 
except through the agency of ideas ex- 
pressed in words. 

But when it came to the description 
of the influence of the Spirit upon the 
individual after he has accepted the Gos- 
pel, it was impossible to formulate a 

265 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

statement which at once met the practi- 
cal religious requirements and conformed 
to the accepted view of the constitution 
of man. In this dilemma, the religious 
interest prevailed and the logical suf- 
fered. At the same time there was de- 
veloped a confusing variabilitv in the 
definition and use of terms. 

In the debate with Mr. Rice, in 1843, 
Mr. Campbell maintained the proposition 
that "in conversion and sanctification 
the Spirit of God operates on persons 
only through the Word." From the cor- 
respondence which preceded this debate, 
it is evident that it was the desire of both 
parties to state this proposition in such a 
way as to commit Mr. Campbell to the 
defense of the position that all the oper- 
ations of the Spirit are through the 
Word. The wording of the proposition 
as given above was not altogether satis- 
factory to Mr. Campbell, not because it 
was too sweeping and inclusive, but be- 
cause it seemed to imply that conversion 
and sanctification were different proc- 
esses. 

266 



THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

In his opening speech in this debate 
he clears up this point as follows: "Re- 
generation, conversion, justification, 
sanctification, etc., are frequently repre- 
sented as component parts of one proc- 
ess; whereas, any one of these, independ- 
ent of the others, gives a full representa- 
tion of the subject." Evidently he 
means to use the terms as synonymous, 
each of them covering the entire process 
from the sinner's initial turning to God 
until the final perfecting of the Chris- 
tian character. The several terms rep- 
resent the process under several distinct 
figures. A similar statement is made in 
the Christian System (p. 276): ''We are 
not to suppose that regeneration is some- 
thing which must be added to the faith, 
the feeling and the action of the believer, 
which are the effects of the testimony of 
God understood and embraced. It is 
only another name for the same process 
in all its parts." Again {Rice Debate^ 
p. 613): "Conversion is a term denoting 
that whole moral and spiritual change 

which is sometimes called sanctification, 

267 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

sometimes regeneration. These' are not 
three changes, but one change indicated 
by these three terms, regeneration, con- 
version, sanctification. " 

Taking into consideration only the 
statements in the Campbell-Rice debate, 
this position is consistently maintained, 
that the Spirit exerts no influence upon 
man at any time or in any way, except 
through the agency of the Word. This 
proposition is sustained by arguments 
drawn from Locke's philosophy, from 
which it is shown that the nature of man 
is such that he can be influenced only 
through words. The first argument is 
entitled, "From the Constitution of the 
Human Mind," and the substance of it 
is as follows: The human mind, like the 
body, has a specific and well-defined con- 
stitution. The Spirit of God does not 
change any of a man's faculties, but 
only sets before them new material. As 
the body can be nourished only by what 
enters by the ordained channel, so the 
soul can receive nourishment only if it is 

approached in a manner conformable to 
26S 



THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

its immutable nature. All knowledge of 
tlie sensible universe comes through sen- 
sation and reflection. Knowledge of God 
comes by faith, but "faith comes by 
hearing," and hearing is sensation. The 
Word, spoken or written, must precede 
the hearing or reading which is neces- 
sary for faith. Faith is the first convert- 
ing, regenerating, sanctifying principle, 
and faith is the acceptance of testimony. 
No faith, no conversion or sanctification; 
no hearing, no faith; no Word, no hear- 
ing. Hence the Spirit in these activi- 
ties always acts through the Word. 

The Lockianism of this argument is 
obvious. First, it bases itself explicitly 
upon the I^ockian doctrine that "all 
knowledge comes through sensation and 
reflection." Second, it embodies a pure- 
ly intellectual view of faith. Third, it 
contains implicitly, a protest, elsev/here 
made explicitly against what he calls 
' ' metaphysical regeneration , ' ' — a pro- 
test which is strikingly parallel to 
Locke's turning away from the realm of 

metaphysics and limiting philosophy to 

269 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

the consideration of the powers of the 
human mind, with particular reference to 
the problem of knowledge. Adopting 
this general point of view, Campbell de- 
fined salvation, not in terms of myste- 
rious changes made by the Spirit in the 
soul of man, but in terms of knowledge. 
The question of conversion and regener- 
ation is therefore solved, not by consid- 
ering how the nature of man's soul may 
be changed by the removal of original 
sin, etc., but by considering how man, — 
the natural man, with the powers which 
lyocke has ascribed to him in his Essay — 
can come to a knowledge of the will of 
God and of the advantages which flow 
from obedience to it. 

The second argument in support of 
the general proposition is that "there is 
nowhere a single Christian or spiritual 
idea that has not been derived from the 
Bible. This declaration is sustained not 
only by a general reference to "the 
known facts of the history of religion" 
(from which it would be obviously im- 
possible to establish such a sweeping 
270 



THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

proposition), but also by the use of the 
same I^ockian argument as that involved 
in the preceding. Man derives the 
material for his ideas solely through the 
senses. But no sensations given by 
objects of the natural world could fur- 
nish the material for Christian or spirit- 
ual ideas. Therefore the sensations 
must come audibly or visibly through 
revelation. The Word is the only audi- 
ble or visible product of revelation. 
Therefore spiritual ideas come only 
through the Word. 

In the debate with Mr. Rice, Mr. 
Campbell is a thorough- going and con- 
sistent I^ockian in his conclusions and in 
his arguments. He defines conversion, 
regeneration and sanctification as synon- 
ymously denoting the entire process by 
which the sinner is transformed into the 
perfect Christian, and gives no hint that 
the Spirit operates in this whole process 
otherwise than through the Word. A 
study of the Christian System will re- 
veal two facts: first, that in that work 

the terms are sometimes used in a differ- 

271 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

ent sense; and second, that there are in- 
dications of the recognition of an influ- 
ence of the Spirit in sanctification which 
could not be accounted for on strictly 
Lockian principles. 

In one of his characteristic sweeping 
generalizations in which he schematizes 
the whole divine plan in one brief out- 
line, he asserts (^Christiait System^ p. 
64) that "The entire change effected in 
man by the Christian system, consists of 
four things:" (i) A change of views 
— faith; (2) a change of affections — re- 
pentance and reconciliation; (3) a 
change of state, — being born again, a 
change effected by baptism; and (4) a 
change of life or character — conversion. 
In expounding this arrangement, Mr. 
Campbell deplores and criticises the in- 
discriminate use of terms which con- 
fuses the whole subject, by using the 
term "regeneration," for example, in 
reference to the entire change, — a usage 
which he asserts is quite unscriptural. 
He continues: "But suppose it should 

be conceded that the term regeneration 

272 



THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

might be just equivalent to 'being born 
again,' it could even then represent only 
so much of this change as respects mere 
s^a^e. ' ' Compare this with the previous- 
ly quoted statement from the Campbell- 
Rice debate, that regeneration is synony- 
mous with conversion and that both rep- 
resent the entire change. 

Continuing, {^Christian System^ p. 65) 
he says: "Being born again is, or may 
be, the effect of a change of views, of a 
change of affections, or it may be the 
cause of a change of life; but certain it 
is, it is not identical v^ith any of them, 
and never can represent them all." But 
again, abandoning the synonymous use 
of the terms "regeneration" and "being 
born again," and reverting to the inclu- 
sive definition of the former which is 
expressed in the Rice debate, he says, 
{^Chrisfiaiz System^ p. 280): "Being 
born again is only the last act of regen- 
ation." 

And yet again, to cite a final variation 

of usage, bearing in mind the definition 

of regeneration as equivalent to sancti- 
18 273 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

fication, note the following (^Christian 
System^ p. 284): "All that is done in 
us before regeneration, God our Father 
effects through the Word, or the Gospel 
as dictated and confirmed by His Holy 
Spirit. But after we are thus begotten 
and born by the Spirit of God — after our 
new birth — the Holy Spirit is shed on 
us richly through Jesus Christ our 
Saviour; of which the peace of mind, 
the love, the joy, and the hope of the 
regeneration are full proof; for these are 
among the fruits of that Holy Spirit of 
promise of which we speak." In this 
passage there is clearly a use of the term 
"regeneration" as signifying the pro- 
cesses which culminate in the beginning 
of the Christian life, but certainly not 
including the subsequent growth in 
grace which is included in the definition 
of the Campbell-Rice debate. 

We are therefore driven to the conclu- 
sion that, though Mr. Campbell's type 
of mind naturally inclined him to the 
making of schemes and outlines of the 

process of salvation, he was not consist- 
274 



THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

ent in his use of terms, and it is impossi- 
ble to transfer a definition given in one 
place to an argument in another without 
doing injustice to his thought. For ex- 
ample: It has been asserted that he be- 
lieved in baptismal regeneration, and it 
is not difficult to construct a plausible 
argument. He connects baptism with 
the new birth, defining the latter here 
as mere change of state; elsewhere he 
uses the new birth as synonymous v\^ith 
regeneration; still elsewhere he defines 
regeneration as indicating the whole 
change effected by the Christian system. 
Therefore, baptism effects the whole 
change by which the sinner becomes a 
perfect Christian. Such an argument is 
as fallacious as it is plausible, because 
the middle terms are both used in double 
senses. 

But there is involved in the last quo- 
tation something more than a loose use 
of terms. There is a recognition of a 
different kind of influence of the Spirit 
from that which he has previously as- 
serted to be the only possible method 
275 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

consistent with the constitution of the 
human mind. Before regeneration, he 
says, the Spirit does its work only- 
through the Word; but after we are born 
anew the "Holy Spirit is shed on us 
richly through Jesus Christ, our Sav- 
iour." The latter method, though not 
closely defined, is clearly distinguished 
from the influence through the Word. 
In immediate connection with the last 
passage quoted, Mr. Campbell distin- 
guishes between "the bath of regenera- 
tion," which is the culmination of the 
Spirit's activity through the Word, and 
"the renewing of the Holy Spirit." He 
continues: "But this pouring out of the 
influences, this renewing of the Holy 
Spirit, is as necessary as the bath of re- 
generation to the salvation of the soul 
and to the enjoyment of the hope of 
heaven of which the apostle speaks. In 
the kingdom into which we are born of 
water, the Holy Spirit is as the atmos- 
phere in the kingdom of nature; we 
mean that the influences of the Holy 

Spirit are as necessary to the new life as 

276 



THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

the atmosphere is to our animal life in 
the kingdom of nature." 

How that atmosphere-like influence of 
the Spirit operates upon man, when man 
is so organized that he can receive ideas 
and impressions only through the senses, 
is nowhere fully explained. There is a 
hint when he says that, so long as the 
senses remain the only avenues to the 
soul of man, so long will the ordinances, 
baptism and the lyord's Supper, remain 
valid and necessary means of grace. But 
be^^ond this there is scarcely a sugges- 
tion, and one is forced to believe that at 
this point Mr. Campbell found his philos- 
ophy inadequate for the explanation of a 
truth which he felt to be real and actual. 
The value of prayer for spiritual aid and 
strength was a fact which religion de- 
manded and which he recognized and 
expressed. He says: "It is the duty of 
Christians to perfect holiness in the fear 
of the Lord. This requires aid. Hence, 
assistance is to be prayed for, and it is 
promised. The Holy Spirit, then, is the 

author of all our holiness; and in the 

277 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

Struggle after victory over sin and temp- 
tation it helps our infirmities, and com- 
forts us by seasonably bringing to our 
remembrance the promises of Christ, and 
strengthens us with all might in the 
inner man." 

In the philosophy of I^ocke there is no 
room for a philosophy of prayer, least of 
all of prayer for strength against temp- 
tation and comfort in trouble. There is 
no room for any influence of the Spirit 
except through channels which appeal to 
the senses, z. e. , the Word and the ordi- 
nances. Mr. Campbell recognized the 
fact of such a spiritual influence, but he 
had no other philosophy to fall back 
upon. Consequently, he forsook his sys- 
tem at this point and stated religious 
truth simply as religious truth, ignoring 
the fact that it could not be logically co- 
ordinated with his system. 

A thinker is always at his best at the 
point where he finds his system too 
small to contain him. Mr. Campbell 
inherited a conception of God as a tran- 
scendent, extra-mundane Being, who 

278 



THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

could direct human events only by- 
breaking tbrougb the laws of nature in 
sheer miracle; and a conception of man 
as a being who could be moved only by 
ideas {i. e.^ by an appeal to the intel- 
lect) and could be reached only through 
the senses. These philosophical presup- 
positions were of the highest service in 
clearing the ground of certain baneful 
superstitions which had troubled the re- 
ligious world. The philosophy of the 
Enlightenment was a philosophy of 
common sense, of clearness and distinct- 
ness, and the sworn foe to all forms of 
mysticism. But, based on a psychology 
too clear and simple to be profound, and 
which later thought has shown to be 
shallow and one-sided, it could give no 
explanation to the richer depths of re- 
ligious experience. 

For the theologian who had at his 
command no other philosophy than this, 
there were two courses open: he might 
adhere rigidly to the philosophy and 
issue either in the arid orthodoxy which 

characterized the latter part of the 

279 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

eigTiteentli century in England, or in 
deism verging constantly toward com- 
plete negation; or, lie might use the 
philosoph}^ as far as possible consist- 
ently with the requirements of his relig- 
ious consciousness, and abandon it when 
its limitations would force him into un- 
desirable paths. Mr. Campbell chose 
the latter alternative. It was this de- 
sertion of the philosophy which he had 
used in the greater part of his system, 
that gave Mr. Campbell the right to 
repudiate what he calls the "word 
alone" theory as "the parent of a cold, 
lifeless rationalism and formality." The 
sensational philosophy logically followed 
out leads to the word- alone theory in its 
baldest and most extreme form. 

To summarize, the following points 
may be cited as evidence of the lyocki- 
anism of Mr. Campbell's position in 
regard to the influence of the Holy 
Spirit: 

(i) He protests against the idea of 

metaphysical regeneration and states the 

whole process in terms of knowledge; 

280 



THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

L/Ocke turned the attention of philoso- 
phers for a century away from meta- 
physics to the theory of knowledge. 

(2) So far as he adheres to the logical 
requirements of his system, he makes 
the Word, a thing ' cognizable by the 
senses, the only means by which the 
Spirit influences man; Locke laid down 
the principle that man is so constituted 
that he can receive influences only 
through the senses. 

(3) He protested against making the 
emotions a criterion in religion and em- 
phasized the simple elements of sense 
experience as the universal element in 
the Gospel, — not "how do you feel?" 
but "what do you believe and what have 
you done?" lyocke considered the in- 
tellectual element of human experience 
based on the sensations, as the universal 
element; emotions are purely individual 
and incommunicable, except when trans- 
lated into terms of intellectual concepts. 

281 



Chapter IX 
The Idea of God 



THK IDEA OF GOD. 

I. SiGNiifiCANCE; oif THK Idka OK GoD: 

1. Governs the conception of all doctrines, 

2. A matter of emphasis, not of definition. 

II. Thk Inherited Idea — Transcendence: 

1. Covenant Theology. 

2. Puritanism. 

3. Orthodox apologetics. 

4. Deism. 

III. Transcendence in Campbei<l's Theoi^ogy: 

1. The Kingdom of God. 

2. Man's inabilit}' to know God except through 

Revelation, emphasizes God's extra-mun- 
dane existence. 

3. All authority external — God, as seat of 

authority is not indwelling. 

4. The Book gives only hypothetical impera- 

tive; loyalty to Person of Christ gives cate- 
gorical imperative. 

IV. An Eighteenth or a Nineteenth Cen- 

tury Theoi^ogy? 

1. Eighteenth century in basis and content. 

2. Nineteenth century in method of use. 

3. The ' 'return to nature. ' ' 

2S4 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 

The most fundamental conception in 
any system of theology is the concep- 
tion of God. All particular doctrines 
are outgrowths and amplifications of 
this. But a theologian's idea of God is 
not to be estimated by his formal defini- 
tions of the Divine Personality, His at- 
tributes and modes of existence. There 
is little difference of opinion in regard 
to the attributes of Deity. That he is 
One, Holy, All- wise, All-powerful, that 
he is a righteous King, a loving Father, 
the omnipotent Creator and Ruler of the 
universe, — these are not points which 
arouse discussion among Christian think- 
ers. Even the metaphysical question as 
to the modes of the divine existence is 
not one of the first importance in esti- 
mating a theologian's conception of 

God. 

285 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

The question which, arises in connec- 
tion with every system of theology is 
rather, What idea of God is most em- 
phasized in it? What aspect of Deity 
is it that appeals most strongly to the 
author, and determines his conception 
of the doctrines of Christianity? What 
phase of the character of God is most 
prominent in his statement of the rela- 
tion between God and man. It might 
easily be that the same definition of the 
divine attributes would satisfy at once a 
mystic and a scholastic. Neither would 
find in it anything to deny; the mystic 
would emphasize the immanence of God 
and would therefore conceive of God's 
relation to man as one of communion, 
while the scholastic would emphasize 
the ideas of transcendence and author- 
ity. Accordingly, the consideration of 
the idea of God must be based upon a 
generalization from the entire system. 
Although logically first, since it is fun- 
damental to the system, it must be con- 
sidered last, as a conclusion of the study 

of all the particular doctrines. 
286 



THE IDEA OF GOD 

Since the estimate is largely a matter 
of noting the relative emphasis upon 
different phases of the character of God, 
it must depend not upon isolated quota- 
tions, but upon a broad generalization. 
It will easily be possible to cite passages 
from Mr. Campbell's works, as from the 
writings of any other theologian, which 
explicitly recognize elements in the 
divine character which exercised little 
influence in his formulation of the doc- 
trines. And it may be, too, that differ- 
ent critics would gain different impres- 
sions as to the relative emphasis upon 
various attributes. The personal equa- 
tion must play a large part in such an 
estimate. The aim is to feel the spirit, 
divine the innermost motive, and catch 
the dominant note of the system. 

The conception of God which ortho- 
dox Protestantism developed during the 
first three centuries of its history, laid 
great emphasis upon His transcendence, 
practically to the exclusion of the im- 
manence. Of Calvinism this was pre- 
eminently true, but it was scarcely less 

287 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

true of the Covenant Theology, which 
laid special stress upon God's func- 
tion as the organizer of a government 
and a giver of laws, which man must 
obey if he wishes to obtain the benefits 
that the government can confer. 

Puritanism in England developed an 
idea of God which has become pro- 
verbial for its austerity. God was con- 
ceive'd as an essentially extra-mundane 
Being, handing down a revelation of 
himself to men from the abyss of in- 
finite space which was his habitation. 
The laws of nature were his commands, 
but their uniform operation did not indi- 
cate his continued presence. But with 
this conception of a God whose most 
notable attributes were majesty, power 
and transcendence, they united a sublime 
faith in the Providence which watched 
over their lives and fortunes. The tran- 
scendent God honored his chosen people 
by breaking over the laws which he had 
established, to come to their relief in 
time of need. But special Providence, 

so interpreted, meant the irruption of a 

288 



THE IDEA OF GOD 

transcendent God into a sphere of activ- 
ity which was not normal to him. 

The orthodox apologetics of the eight- 
eenth century proceeded upon a concep- 
tion of God not essentially dissimilar to 
that of the Puritans. The apologists 
attempted to prove, by arguments drawn 
from the constitution of nature and the 
evidences of design and intelligent 
adaptation which it presents, that, at 
the beginning of the process which is 
now represented by the on-going of nat- 
ural laws, there stood a creative God. 
This the deists were, in general, inclined 
to admit. But whereas the deists main- 
tained that the God who created the 
universe had been a passive spectator 
ever since the day of creation, the ortho- 
dox believed that he had from time to 
time broken through the shell of natural 
law which shuts Him from His world, 
and had given to men a body of revealed 
truth concerning Himself. Both the 
deists and the orthodox interpreted reve- 
lation in the same way, as an arbitrary 

and abnormal incursion of a transcendent 
289 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

God into the sphere of human activities. 
The former held that such an interrup- 
tion of the natural order had never oc- 
curred; the latter believed that it had 
occurred. The conception of God and of 
revelation was fundamentally the same 
in both. Their dispute was primarily 
over a question of fact, as to whether 
God had or had not done a certain 
thing. 

Inheriting the theological concepts of 
the Covenant Theology and of the Eng- 
lish Enlightenment on its orthodox side, 
it would have been surprising if Mr. 
Campbell had not had at the center of 
his system a conception of God as pri- 
marily a transcendent Being, whose 
most characteristic function was the 
giving of laws. It is no disparagement 
to him to say that it was so. It was a 
limitation which he shared with nearly 
all of the writers of his time. By glanc- 
ing at some of his doctrines, as defined 
in previous chapters, some suggestions 
may be derived for estimating his con- 
ception of God, and some illustrations 

290 



THE IDEA OF GOD 

may be found of the way in which the 
current conception was embodied in his 
doctrinal statements. 

A suggestion is at once afforded by 
the fact that, as previously stated, the 
logical basis of Mr.' Campbell's con- 
structive theological thinking is his idea 
of the Kingdom of God. In other 
words, it is the idea of God as the head 
of a monarchical government, of which 
men must be subjects in order to secure 
their own highest welfare. The Cove- 
nant relation between God and man 
goes far toward softening the rigor of the 
transcendence, as viewed by Calvinism. 
God is no longer conceived as an omnip- 
otent Being who seeks to show forth 
His own glory by arbitrarily appointing 
some of His subjects to enjoy eternal life 
and others to endure eternal agony. He 
makes terms with man and throws upon 
him the responsibility of working out 
his own salvation. But the Kingship is 
still the essential function of the divine 
character. God does not arbitrarily pre- 
destine one man to blessing and another 
291 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

to eternal woe, but he lays down con- 
ditions, one of which at least is a com- 
mand arbitrarily imposed as a test of 
obedience. The division of the divine 
commands under the covenants into two 
classes, moral and positive (which from 
another point of view might be termed 
reasonable and arbitrary), after the an- 
alogy of the two kinds of human laws 
which exist under the social contract, is 
itself a suggestive feature. 

In treating of the means of knowing 
God and the seat of religious authority, 
the same general conception is clearly 
present. The statement, often repeated 
and much depended upon by Mr. Camp- 
bell, that every idea of God comes from 
the Bible, virtually means that, so far as 
man's cognitive powers are concerned, 
God is not in nature or history; He is in 
the world only at those points where he 
has chosen to make a special revelation 
of himself. Occasional statements to 
the effect that the laws of nature are the 
laws of God, that the thunder is His 

voice and that the heavens declare His 

292 



THE IDEA OF GOD 

glory, weigh little against the stead- 
fasti}^ maintained position that man can 
know God only through the revelation in 
the Book. Whether God is metaphysic- 
ally present in the world or not, he is 
transcendent so far as man's knowledge 
of Him is concerned. The sensational 
theory of knowledge, by denying man's 
power to know God directly, even if He 
were in the world, unless He were pres- 
ent as a simple object of sense percep- 
tion, forces its adherents to conceive of 
a God who is, in so far as He is known 
at all, transcendent. 

The Book not only gives all the infor- 
mation which we have about God, but it 
is the sole seat of authority for religion. 
No stronger statement of this principle 
could be made than these words ad- 
dressed by Mr. Campbell to B. W. Stone: 
''The truths of the Bible are to be re- 
ceived as first principles, not to be tried 
by our reasons one by one, but to be re- 
ceived as new principles from which we 
are to reason as from intuitive principles 

in any human science." His reliance 

293 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

Upon external authority was not peculiar 
to Mr. Campbell. It was present even 
with Locke, although the implications of 
his system which made it necessary had 
not yet been unfolded. Speaking of the 
impracticability of establishing rules of 
right conduct by reasoning and demon- 
stration, Locke says: "You may as soon 
hope to have all the day-laborers and 
tradesmen, the spinsters and dairy- 
maids, perfect mathematicians, as to 
have them perfect in ethics this way. 
Hearing plain commands is the sure and 
only course to bring them to obedience 
and practice." 

It seems paradoxical that a system so 
thoroughly individualistic as Locke's, 
should, in the hands of its most earnest 
adherents, become the starting-point for 
a new return to authority. It was so 
because it exhibited the weakness and 
insufficiency of the human individual, 
as well as his worth. In its outcome it 
showed that man, as defined by it, could 
not develop out of himself the canons of 

either ethics or religion. Hence a return 

294 



THE IDEA OF GOD 

to external authority is necessary. So 
Locke recognizes the three-fold law, the 
law of God, of the state and of public 
opinion; every ethical writer who fol- 
lowed him gave a prominent place to the 
concepts of law and authority; and 
Campbell, treating of the ground of re- 
ligion rather than of ethics, lays the 
same stress upon authority and law, and 
refers to the Book as the proximate 
source of both. 

The sio:nificance of this entire return 
to external authority, as regards the idea 
of God, lay in its implication that divin- 
ity dwells not in man, nor in the world 
where it is accessible to man and appre- 
hensible by him, but in some far distance 
so remote that He comes within the cog- 
nizance of man only when it pleases 
Him to reveal Himself in some special 
way. The Being who stands forth clear- 
ly in the foreground of religion, in con- 
nection with this emphasis upon the 
externality of religious authority, is a 
transcendent God who stands above and 

away from the world and, by sheer 

295 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

authority, brings order and harmony out 
of a world which the sensational phi- 
losophy had shown to be a mere disinte- 
grated mass of individuals and particu- 
lars. That attitude of mind, represented 
by both lyocke and Campbell, which 
turned away from questions of meta- 
physics and attached importance only to 
the problem of knowledge, would not be 
deeply interested in the question as to 
whether or not God is, in some real sense, 
immanent in the world and in the soul 
of man. It is satisfied with its conclu- 
sion that God cannot be known as imma- 
nent, that the human mind can grasp 
only the verbal and sensible revelation of 
a transcendent God, and that religious 
faith and practice are therefore to be 
governed solely by the laws laid down in 
the revealed Word. 

As has been pointed out in a previous 
chapter, there was developed out of the 
sensational theory of knowledge a theo- 
logical and an ethical utilitarianism 
which, in spite of its practical virtues, 

tended to destroy the spontaneity of both 

296 



THE IDEA OF GOD 

religion and ethics, and to reduce them 
to the level of egoistic hedonism with a 
veneer of piety and morality. Even the 
Covenant Theology had been somewhat 
weak in its presentation of Christian 
obedience as a duty, and unduly strong 
in presenting it as a means of gaining 
an advantage. According to English 
utilitarianism, stated in its baldest form, 
the good man is he who takes account 
not only of the pleasures of sin for a 
season, but also of the greater pleasure 
which will in the future be the reward 
of virtue. 

But any authority which operates on 
this basis, can be, after all, only a con- 
ditional authority: if yon desire to attain 
a certain end, then obey the command. 
According to this view, even the com- 
mand of God is only a hypothetical im- 
perative^ to be obeyed if one wishes to 
secure the benefits which accrue from 
obedience. But neither ethics nor re- 
ligion can be satisfied with anything 
short of a categorical imperative — an 

authority, either external or internal, 
297 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

not conditioned upon the desirability of 
some more ultimate end. An authority 
which is entirely external can never be 
more than conditionally binding. When 
Mr. Campbell said that the philosophy 
of the Bible is the philosophy of human 
happiness, he gave recognition to this 
principle. Since the Bible is a purely 
external authority, its commands can 
be enforced only by an appeal to the 
happiness which will follow obedience 
and the woe which is the fruit of diso- 
bedience. By making the seat of relig- 
ious authority completely external to 
man — a transcendent God speaking only 
through the written Word — Campbell's 
theology, by his own admission, dis- 
qualified itself for going farther than the 
hypothetical imperative of a spiritual- 
ized utilitarianism. 

But religious fervor did what his theo- 
logical statement could not do. The 
authority of the New Testament, the 
Christian's law-book, reverts back to 
the authority of Christ. Interpreted 

coldly, according to Campbell's own 

298 



THE IDEA OF GOD 

theory, this means that the commands 
of Christ are to be obeyed because of the 
happiness which will follow. But the 
introduction of the Person of Christ 
brings in a new element which had no 
place in the formal theory, but had a 
most vitalizing effect on the system. 
However selfishly utilitarian might be 
the thought of obeying the commands of 
the Bible for the sake of its rewards, 
the bringing to light of the Person in 
and behind the Book, introduces an ele- 
ment of personal loyalty and devotion 
which banishes every thought of obedi- 
ence from a selfish motive. 

Shaftesbury's ethical system, though 
theoretically utilitarian, was warmed 
and quickened by a splendid "enthusi- 
asm for society," which saved it from 
degenerating into a mercenary exchange 
of obedience for pleasure. So with 
Campbell, the idea of divine authority 
was kept on a high plane by personal 
loyalty to Christ, though his theology 
was based, as he himself says, on the 

philosophy of happiness. An enthusi- 
299 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELLS THEOLOGY 

asm for the person of Christ furnished 
the key to the religious categorical 
imperative. 

On the basis of the foregoing consid- 
erations, may it not be said that illex- 
ander Campbell's religion v/as more 
Christocentric than his theology? 

In many respects, Mr. Campbell's the- 
ology was a typical product of the Eng- 
lish Enlightenment. The idea of God 
which it embodies and the philo- 
sophical instruments, which were used 
in the formation of the system of doc- 
trine, belonged to the eighteenth cen- 
tur}^ In a limited sense it may be truly 
said that it is an eighteenth century 
theology. But in a more important re- 
spect, his thought was thoroughly of 
the nineteenth centur}\ In his doc- 
trinal formulations, he looked toward 
the eighteenth century; in the compara- 
tively inconspicuous place which he 
gave to all doctrinal statements in the 
movement which he led, he belonged to 
the nineteenth. 

Among the most significant move- 

.^00 



THE IDEA OF GOD 

ments of thouglit at the beginning of 
the nineteenth century was that which 
was lepresented by Wordsworth and 
Tennyson in English letters, — casting 
off the fetters of classicism and seeking 
a freer and a truer- view of life and art, 
by a "return to nature." Simplicity 
and naturalness were the watchwords of 
the new school, and its only rule was to 
be free from rules. 

To pass from Pope to Wordsworth is 
like passing from the tiresome formalism 
of a royal court to an open meadow full 
of wild flowers and wild birds. It is 
like passing from the heavy air of tradi- 
tional sectarianism out under the free 
heaven of religious liberty and charity. 

Parallel with this literary movement 
with its cry, "Back to Nature," came a 
religious movement with the cry, "Back 
to Christ and the Christianity of the New 
Testament." Both sought freedom and 
simplicity, — freedom by setting aside the 
rules and restrictions which were pre- 
scribed by tradition alone, and simplicity 

by putting off all those artificial enibel- 

301 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S THEOLOGY 

lishments, whether literary or religious, 
which obscured the very essence of the 
naked truth. As the religious parallel 
and contemporary of this literary move- 
ment, Mr. Campbell's religious reforma- 
tion may rightfully claim to be a dis- 
tinctly nineteenth century movement. 

The theology taught by Mr. Campbell 
has come into more or less general ac- 
ceptance among the Disciples of Christ. 
If it shall be shown that it is an eight- 
eenth century theology, and that there 
is therefore a presumption that it is not 
the best suited to the needs of the pres- 
ent, it need cause them no embarrass- 
ment. By their elastic constitution they 
are free to change and develop their the- 
ology in the light of the best thought of 
each succeeding generation. 

And, after all, the most important and 
significant point about Alexander Camp- 
bell's theology was the use which he 
made of it. It was not a creed. It was 
not claimed to be a statement of all 
truth. It was not the theology of a 
church. It was simply Ai^kxandER 

Campbki.i.'s Theology. 
302 



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